


(They Say) It's What You Make

by Selenai



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, M/M, On the Run, Science Boyfriends, Summercamp AU, The One Where Bruce is The Sasquatch, science gone wrong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-22
Updated: 2013-10-22
Packaged: 2017-12-30 03:56:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 68,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1013805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selenai/pseuds/Selenai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A young Bruce Banner meets a young Tony Stark at a summer camp for budding scientific minds. In an effort to win a scholarship competition, Bruce creates a serum that will inadvertently change his life forever. With Tony's help, Bruce must contend with the effects of his transformation, as well as the typical turmoil of teenage attraction.</p><p>Written for the Marvel Big Bang.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(They Say) It's What You Make

**Author's Note:**

> This absolutely couldn't have happened without the people who read through this a dozen times with me while I was writing it and convinced me to stop before it became more of a thing than it was. Especially my poor beta who had to read through and change all of my tense mistakes, whoops. She's a trooper.
> 
> There's a couple of pieces of [ art](http://emc14.livejournal.com/674.html) that go with this fic and you should definitely check them out! They're by my awesome partner in crime! There's also a mix for it [ here](http://8tracks.com/selenai/they-say-it-s-what-you-make) if that's your style.
> 
> This fic was absolutely written for the Marvel Big Bang on LJ, and probably never would have been completed otherwise, and the title comes from 'Demons' by Imagine Dragons which I listened to on repeat pretty much the whole time I was writing this.

The average summer camp generally tended to consist of some cabins up in some trees in the woods. Usually there were some counsellors that were barely qualified to be up there themselves, who were in charge of some groups of children sent up to camp by parents that were looking to get rid of them for as long as possible, who would rarely listen to any of the instructions given to them-- thus leading to an environment that was a perfect breeding ground for all sorts of bullying and plenty of injuries, and just an all around time that Bruce Banner had always found to be less than fun.

Or so had been his experience the two or three times that he'd gone to summer camp as a child in elementary school. His aunt hadn't made him go after the year he'd come back without any of his underwear left, which he’d been pretty grateful for. Kids didn’t tend to take kindly to other kids who acted like they were leagues smarter than they were (even when it was really, really, true), and that was doubly true for summer camp as it was for regular school. That’s the biggest takeaway that Bruce had learned from the experience.

This year was supposed to be different, though. This _camp_ was different. For one thing, the school had approached his aunt with a scholarship offer for the camp themselves (and what kind of summer camp was offering scholarships to kids like Bruce Banner? He thought that he'd done a pretty good job of being as ordinary as possible. Trying to fly as low under the radar as possible in this hellhole of a school.) and for another, this place was barely even a summer camp. This was one of those places that Bruce had always heard of that rich people sent their kids off to when they wanted to get rid of them for as much of the summer as they possibly could. So he guessed it was just like a summer camp, but just the rich person’s variety.

Well, technically, it was a Science Camp. A military style science camp, from what he could tell from all of the pamphlets and internet information that he'd been able to pull together, but it really was state of the art. Laboratories and professors from some of the best schools around that were going to be teaching some classes between a few of the more stereotypical (and unfortunately mandatory) summercamp-ish activities.

As interested as he'd become in it (and it was going to look great on his transcripts when he graduated, his administrator had promised him-- it would help with the fact that he hadn't taken on any kind of extracurriculars for his senior year), nothing had made the decision easier for him to go than the fact that his Aunt Susan had seemed so excited for him.  More excited than usual, even. He wasn't sure if she was exactly as excited for him as she seemed to be, or just excited at the prospect of finally having a break from having to take care of her teenaged nephew for a whole summer, but he knew that she deserved the break, and he probably owed her one. Or a good dozen of them.

It wasn't without some level of excitement, though, that he packed up some of his belongings for the summer. It would be good to be surrounded by people who were hopefully as smart as (or nearly as smart as) he was. Even if most of them had probably been bought into the camp by their parents, they would likely have to maintain some kind of level of intelligence in order to actually get into the camp. Or to keep up the camp’s good name and reputation. It was unlikely that he would be surrounded by the kind of idiots that frequented his own high school. It was going to be a good break for him. A whole new experience. That's what he telling himself, at least until he actually got to the camp.

Somewhat unfortunate for him was that his first experience of the camp was going to be with other student campers that were in much the same kind of situation as he was (in that they had been given the opportunity to have scholarships offered to them for one reason or another-- though they never seemed to talk about it, and it was almost strange just how secret that kind of information was being kept, given how chatty the average person his age tended to be.) crammed together in a too-small school bus that was very improperly ventilated to be trekking up the mountainous region that had been chosen for the location for the camp. It was really too sweaty (and definitely smelled like it), and considering that there were only about fourteen of them on the bus-- it was really loud. Excessively loud. It was strangely cramped, too, limbs thrown over the edge of seats and bags just tossed wherever people had thought to throw them. Bruce wasn't a neat freak or anything, but feeling penned in was never one of his favourite things, and he'd been relegated to the back of the bus as it had filled up, so it's not like he had a lot of say in the matter.

He did what he preferred to do in situations such as this (and it was almost frustrating how often he found himself in situations such as this one, really), and curled himself up into the seat in his back corner of the bus with his knees pressed up to his chest, taking up as little space as possible, watching out the window as the drove. Usually he'd be reading a book or something, and he wasn't exactly one for scenery or anything like that, but he wanted to memorize whatever he could about where they were going. He just had this feeling in his stomach that he might need it at some point. It also meant that he wasn't going to run through any of the reading material that he might need at any point in the future in case the camp got boring. One just couldn't be too careful with these kinds of things. Or too prepared.

And since he had been very little, Bruce had been the kind of kid who always followed those little voices that gave him advice or whatever, whether they came from his head or his stomach. They tended to be right more often than not. Not that he had little voices in his head that were talking to him or anything, but it was an intuition thing. He liked to think of himself as an intuitive guy. Definitely not crazy, just intuitive.

Even though he'd Googled it before he'd left from home (and his aunt had offered to print him off a map before he'd left, wanting him to feel as comfortable as possible. But he wasn't that much of a kid anymore-- and he'd memorized the map, besides, and he imagined that the other kids would have had a field day teasing the smaller kid who still carried around maps from his parents-- or whatever passed for parents. Whatever, this was 2013, families were different.), the few hours in the stuffy bus feel like they take even longer than advertised, and when it finally slows down and pulls off of the highway and begins winding through an overly complicated (and probably unnecessary) pathway towards where Bruce assumes the camp is, he's relieved. He's still not sure what to expect aside from the pictures that had been pasted on the website (and those had been understandably vague for a military camp, even if they had slapped the science label on it), and he wasn't exactly sure what he was getting into aside from that. It was supposed to just be a science camp with a bit of a military theme, but he was pretty sure that they'd just passed through some kind of barbed wire fencing and, well, that had definitely not been in the brochure. So it was definitely more than just a little bit of a military theme, then. That seems promising.

They pass through the fence (after being stopped to have their bus counted to be sure that there is the proper number of students accounted for, and for their bus driver to swipe a card through a reader-- this seems like a very thorough camp), they finally pull into a kind of dirt and gravel parking lot, and Bruce feels like he can finally breathe. Still staring out the window, he can see that the whole thing is filled up with expensive vehicles, and other children, and what appear to be their parents (or handlers, he's never been the greatest at being able to tell the difference).

That's more the kind of thing that he was expecting here. He can tell by the look on some of their faces (and one of them appears to be trying to hold their breath if the redness of his face is anything to go by) that they don't want anything to do with the place. This is definitely more of what he was expecting.

Shoulders relaxing a little as they're shuffled off the bus, Bruce feels slightly more relaxed. It's almost like a regular summer camp. It sure sounds like one out here. Smells clean and good, too. Just like the other places he'd been. Still, though, he can't shake the sight of that barbed wire fence-- and it was definitely weird to have to stop to get your vehicle checked through and counted just for a summer camp. Not that there had even been that many experiences to match it up with.

Bruce doesn't really have too much time to think about it, though, because they're being herded fairly quickly towards the side of the bus where their bags have been stacked up, and, being smaller than all of the other boys (and half of the girls), he has to hurry to grab hold of the one large bag that he'd packed for himself and yank it out of the bottom of the pile. It takes a few pulls before he manages to grab it, and is careening back with it.

He half-expects to fall back onto his ass (something that happens to him more often than not), but instead finds that he's fallen back and onto something soft and probably forced _her_ onto her ass.

Bruce moves even faster after that to toss his bag off of himself, pushing off of the girl and turning around to offer her his hand with the most apologetic smile that he can offer her. She's pretty, and luckily doesn't look too worse for wear. Still, though, he's not used to introducing himself that way to people. Especially not pretty girls who surprisingly don't look that angry at having been pitched onto the ground like that.

“I'm sorry, uh, I'm really, really sorry. I guess I packed a little more than I needed to. Are you all right? I've got my first aid, if you have any bad scrapes or bruises, or if it's worse than that we can get you to a doctor-- I'm not that bad at patching people up, I swear--”

She's just staring at him for a minute as he babbles at him, her blue eyes a little wide, brown hair a little wild around her face, before she begins to laugh, taking his hand and letting him help her up as she wipes the dust off of her skirt.

“I'm fine, really, and I think you might need to calm down a little, or you're going to give yourself some kind of attack or something. Who are you, anyways? Do you always just bump into people without introducing yourself?”

“Bruce, sorry, I'm Bruce Banner.”

“Okay, Bruce Banner, I think you need to calm down for sure. I've fallen down a few times before, I'm not going to break in half. I'm Elizabeth Ross. Betty, though. I like it better when my friends call me Betty.”

It's hard not to return her smile, it's infectious, and Bruce flushes just a little before pulling his own hand back from hers. He's not used to people just coming up and talking to him. Most of the people at his school tended to avoid him. Something about being a genius and also having a murderer for a father tended to put people off. Betty seemed different, though, and Ross-- Ross sounded familiar to him, but he wasn't really sure why. Lots of people probably have the name Ross, it's a pretty common name, there's no reason for him to always be so suspicious of everything. He's probably just on edge because of the whole military entrance to the summercamp.

“It's nice to meet you, Betty. I'm really sorry again about the whole knocking you over thing. I'm pretty sure it won't happen again. Not on purpose, anyways. Not that you're an easy target, or anything.”

She just laughs at him, and reaches out to give his arm a light squeeze. “Don't worry about it. Don't be a stranger, though, why don't you join me and my table for dinner tonight? If you don't have plans already, I mean?”

He's not really sure how anyone could already have plans already, since the camp hasn't started yet, and he'd only just gotten off the bus (which Betty had to have noticed), but he guesses that maybe some people had been to the camp the year before or maybe they went to school together-- cliques. Just what Bruce was looking forward to this summer.

But Betty didn't seem like any of those girls that he automatically would associate with the kind of cliques that he saw at his school. She's smiling so easily at him, and his arm is still warm where she'd squeezed it, and he is sure that if he looked in a mirror, there would still be an echo of a smile from their conversation. He doesn't have any other plans, so why not take her up on her offer?

Betty leaves Bruce to join another girl and Bruce is left to go on the tour of the camp. It would have been a lie to say that he wasn't impressed by what they were showing them. The camp could hold up to one hundred campers at a time, separated into bunkers that each held ten campers (segregated by gender, of course). The best parts, though, are the parts of the camp that held the labs and workshops. Enough of them for everyone to work comfortably without getting too much into anyone's way. It was amazing. Bruce has never seen anything like it in his entire life. He didn't know that anything like it could exist-- but of course he's never gone anywhere more extravagant than the average public school.

It was almost worth coming just to see the labs themselves.

In fact, everything was living up to what he'd thought he was going to be getting out of the summer until they'd lined everyone up and began to explain to them about the ID tags that they were going to be expected to wear at all times. They looked like the military issued dog tags, but with small badges attached to them that would, apparently, allow them to move freely within the camp. Without them, they wouldn't be able to do anything, and would actually be seen as threats inside of the camp walls.

Whatever that meant. Bruce is pretty sure that doesn't sound good, and he is also pretty sure that he was right when he thought that it doesn't sound like anything that a regular camp needed to do to keep their campers safe. Is it because this was a camp full of genius children? Or is it because this is a camp full of (mostly) rich children? Or are there other children like Bruce here? Children from families like his? He'd been offered a scholarship almost out of the blue, after all, and everyone else on that bus had been awfully secretive...

He couldn't figure that much out just yet, and that is a little bit on the frustrating side for him. But he is starting to become paranoid about it, too, and that never means anything good for his scientific side. He just needs to take in the rest of the camp, and then dwell on the rest of the the things later.

The last part of the tour has them meeting the people that will be in charge of them.  Bruce memorizes their names and faces as they're being introduced, and pays close attention to all of the information that they're giving them about where they all went to school and how they graduated (he might find some of this information helpful for himself in the future, he hasn't decided everything for himself yet, so who knows), when finally their last “Keeper” is introduced.

“General Thaddeus Ross”

The reaction for Bruce is both physical and emotional, and he comes very close to standing up and running away (and running always feels like the best response to things when they go the very worst that they can go, and this is definitely one of those times). It's like he's back to _that day_ again, just a kid (even more of a kid, he guesses), and the General is questioning him, and he's lying (he has to protect his dad, doesn't he?) but the General knows that he's lying to him. It doesn't matter, anyways, because they figure it all out in the end, the General finds out that his Dad did it, Bruce knows that his Dad did it, _EVERYONE_ knows that his Dad did it, and not everyone knows that Bruce is going to turn out just like his Dad. But Ross does. Ross thinks it more than even Bruce. Especially the General, who told Bruce when he was just a kid back then that he was going to be watching him from now on. That he would be watching because he knew what happened to kids like him that came from men like his Dad. That there is no other way for him to go but there.

It takes a few minutes for the nausea to pass, those minutes are all the minutes it takes for the introduction of General Ross to be over, and the room is still humming with the excitement of many of the other campers at having met a real army general, and they're excited even as they're moving out of the room. Bruce moves with the swarm of the other children away from where the adults are. He can feel the General's eyes on him, though, can feel them just the same today as he could feel them that day and every day since.

Bruce wonders why he's really here.

It becomes obvious to Bruce that night as he's walking into the dining hall, that he's going to have to find a way to deal with the way his body reacts to seeing General Ross. He can't just panic every time that he sees him. He can't just freak out every time, or this whole summer is going to be the death of him. It's too late to just leave, and he has no idea what he would say to his aunt, besides. Especially since she'd opted to go on a vacation of her own, and Bruce isn't sure that she would ever forgive him for taking that away from him after all of these years, and he doesn't even know how expensive her vacation had been, anyways. He can't do that to her, not now.

Another reason, well, it comes in the form of Betty Ross. Betty who comes up to him as soon as he walks into the Hall, taking his hand and leading him over to one of the smaller tables to sit with her. There's only a few other people at the table, and he offers them a half a smile. It's the best he can do, but it's more than he'd thought he would be able to offer. He can't just avoid her now, can he? It's nice to have someone who seems to want to be his friend the way that Betty wants to be.

Even if he's not entirely sure that she's not just feeling bad for him. She's sweet, though. Her smile makes him want to smile, even when he feels a little sick. He's never had friends before, but he thinks this is what it probably feels like to make them. It's much faster than he could have imagined making friends, even in a place where people are supposed to have similar interests like this place, but he guesses that when you have a limited amount of time to get to know each other, you have to move quickly.

He sits at the table and listens intently to her as she tells him about herself, sharing a few stories from her last day at school and how her summer vacation had started, and the family dog, and even though it's not the most interesting stuff he's ever heard, he likes the way that she likes him listening.

He's made a friend already, and it's been years since he's managed that. Worth the little bit of effort for sure.

They're told that their mandatory activities won't be starting until the next day, but that they'll mostly be working in the labs for the first few days, because the camp's official competition starts on the third day of the first week. Once the competition is in full swing, they're told that they'll have to participate in mandatory outdoor activities, just like the camp had promised their parents.

Bruce doesn't really mind all that much, since he imagines that will give him the chance to explore the forest some, maybe even collect some biological samples and see how they differ from back home. He heard about the competition that the camp holds, and about the kind of prize money, scholarship money, and notoriety that comes from winning-- he doesn't know what the competition will be this year, not really and for sure, but he knows that he wants to win. He wants to prove himself, and he wants all of those things at least as badly as all of the other kids here. Probably more than most of them. He definitely needs that money more than most of them. He's seen the way a few of them look at the way he's dressed in scuffed up jeans and t-shirts with holes around the hemline where he worries it the most.

They don't need that kind of money the way he does.

That first night, it's all that he can think of. He can't sleep, can't even keep his eyes closed for more than a few hours. He spends those hours just sitting in the dark, listening to one of the other boys in the bunker just snoring, and snoring, and snoring (and what rich kid goes to a summer camp with a snore like that and no strips or mouth guard or something? It's rude, but probably just as inconsiderate as he assumed it would be.) until he's practically making songs in his head that go along with the tune of the snoring, and he has to get up and go out or he's going to go completely crazy.

It's surprisingly easy to get out of the bunker with his ID tags even though it probably means that the General and all the other counsellors will probably be aware of his midnight stroll, and he spends a good twenty minutes just wandering around, glancing every which way, peeking in the windows of the labs just to get another sight of them because he really wishes that he could get in there again, touch the equipment, do _something_. He's even debating whether or not he could squeeze in through one of the windows when he hears a small sound coming from one of the workshop rooms, along with a soft curse.

That's definitely not a couple of sounds that are allowed to be happening at the same time right now. Bruce knows, because if they were allowed to be happening at the same time, Bruce would be the one who was making them happen, he knows that much for sure.

He scrambles down from where he perched up on the window of the lab, and over to where he heard the sound from Workshop Room Three, and it's hard for someone like Bruce who notices everything, not to notice that the door has been jimmied open just a little bit. He's able to force his fingers inside just a little bit, and pry open the door to get inside. Someone else is definitely inside of here, and judging by the sneakiness (and it's not the greatest level of sneakiness, either), Bruce feels comfortable in guessing that it's one of the student campers, and not one of the older counsellors.

Sneaking further into the shop, Bruce keeps his eyes open, blinking as little as possible. He doesn't want to miss anything. The light from a faint kerosene lamp lights up a small portion of the room (which explains why he couldn't see the light from outside, and that's really smart. Of course, genius children-- but still, he's relieved to know that he's not the only one here after all). He's almost over-excited as he walks a little faster towards to light.

“Hey- uh. Hey, you! You left the door open!”

It's a boy, and a dark-haired head shoots up, expression twisted in surprise. “Wait, stop--!”

But it's too late, Bruce moves at the same time as a small, pointed robot jerks forward, and he steps on it. He crushs the small thing under his foot, but the robot has also kind of taken his foot prisoner, getting stuck in there.

White hot pain wraps itself up Bruce's leg as he hops on one leg, grabbing for one of the work benches and hopping over to it, his face twisted into a grimace. “What just happened?!”

“I tried to warn you! Who sneaks up on a guy like that, really? I could have been anyone, you know! I could have been working on a weapon! A bomb! You don't know!”

Bruce rolls his eyes, and reaches down for his foot, trying to pry the small robot from the skin there, hissing as his fingers slip over a bit of the blood instead. He can't get a grip at all, it's just too slippery, and definitely too wedged in there.

“Hang on a second Big Guy, there's a first aid kit here, I'll get it out in a second. You're lucky that's only a prototype!”

Shaking his head a little, Bruce groans. “Yes, I feel very lucky right now.”

The boy returns with the first aid kit, opening it and pulling on a glove before sighing a little at Bruce. “You can call me Dr. Stark until all of this is done if it makes you feel better. It might make you feel like I'm more qualified.”

Bruce just stares at the other boy. Stark. Something about that doesn't make him feel better at all.

“No, I don't think that makes me feel better about this at all. Could you just get your toy out of my foot, please?”

Stark looks offended at that, twisting with hands that were much more agile than they looked to pull the robot out of his foot in one smooth motion. “Toy? This isn't a toy. This is a prototype for the robot that is going to win the camp's competition this year, buddy.”

“Robot? You're building robots in the workshop after lights out to win the prize?”   _Stark_ and _Robots_ “You're Tony Stark, aren't you?”

He should have been able to tell just from the initial use of the name Stark, or the fact that this particular boy had chosen to hide out in a workshop in the middle of the night to build robots instead of causing trouble doing who knows what in one of the girls bunkers or in the woods or-- or who knows where-- but if any of those things hadn’t tipped him off, Bruce really should have been able to tell just from the faint glow of light that he could see shining through the thin material of the camp ordered t-shirt that Tony is wearing. It is an arc reactor, and everything that he read in the science magazines has told him that Tony had created it himself after he’d been in the car accident that killed his parents a couple of years earlier. From what he understood (and he’d never been close enough to understand a lot about it, and it had never been in his field of expertise, really) it kept the bits of shrapnel that were still lodged in his body from getting too close to his heart or anywhere else that might kill him. It was the first thing the other boy had created that labelled him a genius in the scientific community, and it put Bruce a little in awe of him. Though not that he had stepped on his toy robot, he doesn't want to let that show on his face too much.

He definitely doesn't want to tell this other boy that he'd read any of the journals that he'd published, or that one of them was currently sitting on his bedside table at home-- because that might seem creepy.

It had been beyond genius, really, and Bruce didn’t have any idea how someone their age could have come up with it. It definitely looked cool up close, too. It had an almost comforting glow, and something about it put him a little more at ease.

Bruce couldn't tell if Tony looked pleased or not that this was the way that he could tell that this was who Tony was, but he nodded, placing the destroyed robot carefully on the workshop table.

“Obviously. You couldn't tell just by looking at me?”

Bruce shook his head, glancing around the room. “Obviously not. How did you get in here, anyways?”

“Hacked the ID tags last year. They haven't changed the system since then. I can get pretty much anywhere I want without leaving a trail. Going to come up with a better way to use them so that I don't have to wear it around everywhere, too.”

Bruce doesn't even have to try to look impressed at that, because it would be much harder not to. “Wow, that's much more impressive than the robot thing.”

It's obvious that Tony doesn't know whether or not to take that as a compliment, but Bruce just offers him a half a smile, shaking his head. “I am sorry about the robot thing, though. Been kind of, uh, clumsy since I showed up here.”

There's something about Tony, too, just like there had been something about Betty-- Bruce knew that they both had parents who could afford the camp, so they weren't the same as him like that-- but they had that look on their faces, that look like they wanted to be here. Betty when she talked about the human brain and being able to study the way people thought, and Tony just now, the look on his face when he talked about building robots or hacking the system of the ID tags or the way he looked at the stupid (okay, maybe Bruce was biased towards that robot) broken robot.

Something about the way Tony smiled at him just then made his cheeks warm and it made him want to smile back.

He is smiling a lot today. Kind of weird.

The day that the competition is finally explained to them, Bruce is more excited than he can remember being for anything in a long while. He'd been sitting for breakfast at a table with Betty and Tony (and Tony had brought his friend Pepper with him, too) and they'd been waiting since they finished eating for General Ross to come out and explain things to them.

Most of the returning campers already understood the basic premise of the competition (the way Tony had when Bruce had caught him that day with the robots in the workshop), but for the rest of them, like Bruce, it is all new. They are all rather excited. This year the goal is to make something that could help shape the military of the future, to save or change the lives of soldiers and of their country.

Bruce has never really given any thought to this, to what he could do to help his country-- he wants to, of course, but he is still young. He hasn't been courted by any kind of government agencies yet (probably they are still wary of what had happened with his father), but he knows that he could come up with something for this. Something to make the lives of the soldiers easier. He wants to. The more he thinks about it, the more the thought bubbles in his mind that he wants to be a part of what makes the future of the country better somehow.

He can actually still remember from a few years earlier when he'd just been getting into chemistry, when he'd been bullied worse than he had been at any other point in his life-- well, he'd wanted to do anything to make it stop. He'd come close to creating something then. Something that would have made him physically stronger and better in pretty much any way than the bullies who had tried to hurt him.

It had been too dangerous, and he'd been so young, not sure that he could get something like that to work when he hadn't been practiced enough. But now-- maybe now that he has all of this extra experience, maybe he can make an actual difference. Not in dealing with bullies, but in real-life combat. Maybe he can make their soldiers better than regular human biology will allow them to be.

He isn't afraid anymore, because he knows that he is good enough now to make that kind of difference. He wouldn't need to experiment on anyone else-- he is the perfect candidate for the experiments all on his own. The labs are perfect, too. He has access to things here that he'd never had back home.

He can make it work, and he can make a real difference. No scientific discovery was ever without some risk, and Bruce always wanted to be someone in the science world. He is willing to be the person who takes that risk.

Having a memory like Bruce's is a benefit that he often takes for granted, but one that he is really grateful for as he begins working in every extra hour that he has to mix together the serum that he decides to call the 'Super Soldier Serum'. He takes what he remembers from what he had dreamed up three years ago, and builds on that, his days in that lab spent re-measuring and mixing and just watching as ingredients cooked together. He participates in the mandatory activities that first day, but spends all of his extra time in the lab with his serum, not wanting anyone to get too close to it. He also begins keeping extremely detailed journals, knowing that it is important to keep track of every single step of the process. That will be the only way to properly replicate the process after he succeeds.

It is that night when he was sure that it is ready, that he loads it into a syringe. It would have been a lie to say that he isn't nervous. That voice in his head and the one in the pit of his stomach are telling him that he is doing something stupid, but this time he knows that they are wrong. This time he doesn't need to listen to them. This time he is going to be the one who takes the real chances. He'd just never been in a situation to take a chance like this before, to be the one who really steps out of the box or jumped off the ledge for scientific discovery. The voices just couldn't have possibly understood that he was taking the chances for a reason.

He is so close, the top of the needle pressed against smooth skin, when the beep of the door alerts him that it is going to open, and he hides the syringe behind his back. The door opens just a little, and Tony slips in, closing the door behind him, and Bruce lets out a heavy breath that he had no idea he'd been holding, the tension bleeding out of him so quickly that it’s almost painful.

Tony should be easy enough to get rid of.

“I'm almost done, you can, uh, go.”

This isn't going to work.

“What are you doing?”

“I'm working on my project, I'll go to bed soon, it's a secret. You know what a secret is.”

Tony does look a little hurt at that.

“I showed you my project.”

“I stepped on your project.”

Tony shakes his head, narrowing his eyes. Bruce bites down on his lip, stepping back as Tony glances around at the beakers.

“I could turn you in, you know. You're not even supposed to be here.”

His mouth drops, and he makes a sound that's almost a squeak. It's definitely indignant.

“I wouldn't. But I could. Because I'm your friend. Friends say what's up.”

“I can't tell you, you wouldn't understand.”

Tony's definitely frowning now. “See, now I think you just called me stupid, and I don't like that very much.”

“No, I just--” and Bruce is gesturing a little. Not his most shining moment.

“Why are you holding a syringe- Bruce what are you doing?”

Well, now he has no choice. He could just lie, but he's pretty much proven that he's the worst liar in the entire universe. The truth is pretty much his only option here.

“My entry for the competition is a Super Soldier Serum. A series of injections that makes you stronger, faster, bigger than biologically possible. It'll be amazing, Tony. Our troops would be able to beat their enemies twice as fast, they would be harder to kill, they wouldn't get sick-- can you imagine? I could make that possible, I could make a real difference!”

Tony looks a little winded at that. “Bruce, you can't stick yourself with that, you have no idea what it'll do to you! Don't you think that if something like that was possible, people would already be doing it?

Bruce frowns now, shaking his head. “People are too afraid to make something like this, too afraid to test it, Tony. All the red tape they'd have to get through to use something like this? It would take ten years to get something like this approved for human testing. They're too afraid to make a real difference! Haven't you ever wanted to make a _real_ difference in the world? Haven't you ever wanted to play God like all the Greats did? I'm doing this, I'm just begging you not to turn me in.”

There’s a moment between the two of them then, where Bruce is breathing heavily, his chest heaving up and down as he stares at Tony, begging him that way not to turn him in, and the other boy just looks back at him still looking shocked and... well, Bruce isn’t sure what else is there on his face, just that he hopes that whatever it is, it’s going to help him out.

After a minute of what feels like a really intense staring contest, Tony just huffs and steps forward, grabbing for the syringe. “Don’t be stupid about it, then. If you’re going to take on the world then you gotta know that you can’t do it alone. You have to have a really awesome partner in crime. Or science, in this case, I guess. Though they're the same thing, kind of.”

Relinquishing his hold on the syringe, Bruce finally offers Tony a small smile, and nods. A partner? He’d never thought about having a partner in any of the scientific experiments that he’d done in the past, and so it had never crossed his mind to have anyone help him for any of his future endeavours. Of course, he’s never met anyone like Tony Stark before. He doesn’t mind the idea of sharing the credit of his discovery and it really did make more sense to have two sets of hands and two pairs of eyes working on something this important.

Especially since his body (and possibly his brain, who knew) would be slightly preoccupied with whatever the serum might really do to him.

“All right, I’m trusting you to keep this between us, then. You ever stick someone with a needle before?” Maybe a stupid question, since Tony built that whole arc reactor into himself.

Snorting a little, Tony just makes a face that Bruce isn’t sure how to navigate, and moves to grab at the alcohol swab, wiping at a small area on his bicep with little finesse before pushing the needle into his skin and forcing the serum into his body.

At first there isn’t really anything noteworthy happening. Well, other than the pleasantness of Tony’s grip on his arm (and wow, he’ll have to come back to that again later), but a heartbeat or two after Tony pulls the needle out of his arm, the area around the injection sight begins to burn in an extremely unpleasant way. Eyes watering a little, Bruce brings his hand up to apply a little bit of pressure to it, not really expecting the way that the heat chases its way through his body, settling uncomfortably in his chest.

It’s heavy and it’s hot and he doesn’t panic. He’s been prepared for side effects, and that’s all that this is. A side effect. One that is obviously causing him to make strange faces, because Tony is staring at him now.

“It’s hot.” He says by way of explanation, lowering his hands.

Tony just shakes his head a little and discards the syringe in the container that Bruce brought along for it. “I’m still not totally sure that you’re not crazy, buddy. You want to tell me what I'm putting into your body?”

As the heat spreads up and into his head, Bruce just offers Tony something of a grimace and a shrug of one shoulder. “It’s all science, isn’t it? It's just a solution I mixed together a few years ago and managed to find one of the rooms they keep locked up for their 'real' experiments in the bigger buildings up the hill. I irradiated it just a little bit with some gamma rays. Not enough to do any real damage, but hopefully enough that it'll actually have the kind of lasting effect that I'm going for. Nobody saw me, so don't worry about that. I took a page out of your book, and they don't really expect us to be out that late. Besides, they expect kids like us to be out trying to get into the liquor cabinets and stuff, not into their radiation rooms. I was fast, and I just did one big batch. The gamma rays aren't even that dangerous.”

Luckily for Bruce, the side effects that first night aren’t really anything worse than the strange heat that seems to linger even into the next day. Tony sticks with him, though, and neither of them wind up sleeping in their assigned bunkers (which ends up being less of a problem than Bruce had thought it would be, as long as they were up there by the time that the older counsellors came around for wake up call), instead sleeping curled in one of the corners of Tony’s favourite workshops, where they were closer to a first aid kit. It didn’t give them that much more of a safety net, logically, but it made them feel better, all the same.

Before they return to their bunkers the next morning, though, Bruce has Tony inject him with a second dose of the serum (he thinks that it will take two doses a day to get any real results in the short time that he has before the summer is up), and he ignores the fact that the heat is making his hands and feet feel like they’re on fire the whole way back to the bunker now. It’s not a strange side effect. A strange side effect would be if he were fainting or forgetting how to speak or some other cognitive kind of impairment. He could deal with this kind of physical side effect.

It doesn’t go away, though, and when he’s sitting beside Betty at breakfast, he flinches away from her touch when she reaches to brush a little of the hair away from his face. It’s a little more than he’s usually used to being touched, anyways, but he still doesn’t miss the hurt that flashes in her blue eyes. The touch had actually been quite painful to him, and the way that she bites down on her bottom lip es doubly so. He hadn’t meant to hurt her feelings, and he is actually really confused now.

He can tell that Pepper has stopped talking to Tony beside him, and when Betty excuses herself from the table and walks away, Pepper throws a confused look at him as well, but follows after her. Bruce’s gaze follows them, and he can feel it heavy and uncomfortable as the heat that’s starting to make him feel kind of dizzy and sick as he glances over and notices General Ross’ gaze is completely on him.

He looks away.

That’s the last thing he needs right now on top of everything else.

“You look worse than this food tastes, and I hate to say it, but that’s pretty bad, bud.”

Bruce turns his gaze back to Tony, and sighs. “I’m fine. Betty--”

Shaking his head, Tony just shrugs a little. “You’ll never understand her, man, but if you like a girl it’s never good to look like you don’t want her to touch you. It’s better to look like her touch doesn’t repulse you.”

Bruce just groans a little, because he really doesn’t know what to say. He really, really doesn’t know what’s going on. On top of everything, he doesn't know what he's supposed to think about Betty wanting to touch him. It's only been a few days-- do things really move that fast? Is he supposed to want them to move that fast?

Was Betty's touch supposed to make him feel as warm as Tony's hand on his arm had? What if it hadn't? Did that mean that there was something wrong with him?

He feels like he might be sick, though, so he gets up from the table and makes for the washroom.

Getting through the rest of the day is a bit of a struggle for him. The flashes of heat and waves of nausea just seem to get worse, and by the time that dinner rolls around, even his eyes are starting to ache.

To top it off, Betty is still avoiding him, and he’s pretty sure that Ross is still watching him, though Bruce is pretty sure that there’s no way that the older man could have any idea what’s going on. It’s only been a day and he really does trust Tony at least that much.

There’s a campfire that night, which initially Bruce thinks is strangely commonplace for any summercamp to have, much less a place like this-- until he’s filled in on the fact that it’s organized completely by the campers themselves, and that the counsellors just turn their attention away from it, forgiving it because it’s seen as being some sort of teenaged rite of passage or... something else that Bruce isn’t sure that he understands. He doesn’t actually get an invitation to it, but Tony does, and when he gets there, it’s obvious that both Pepper and Betty did as well, since they’re both sitting on one of the overturned logs in pretty summer dresses, waiting for them.

Bruce is a little surprised, since Betty had been avoiding him up to this point all day, but he does offer her an apologetic smile. He guesses that pretty soon he ought to have a conversation with her that involves a lot of apologizing on his part. Tony had been right, no one deserves to be treated the way that he treated her at breakfast-- even if it had been an accident. He wasn’t repulsed by her touch, even if he wasn’t sure what kind of reaction he was having from it (or what kind he was supposed to be having to it-- these weren’t the kinds of things that happened to him back home). He just knows that aside from the fact that the more time that he spends around her, the more time her father spends with his eyes on Bruce (definitely not the kind of attention he is looking for around here), he really likes having Betty as a friend. She makes the room a little lighter whenever she is around, and she is a good balance to the heaviness that he feels whenever Tony is around.

He’s never been to a campfire like this one before, but Bruce wis fairly quick to categorize it into something similar to what the lunch room looks like-- just with a big ball of fire in the middle. Not really the safest of situations. It is kind of nice, though, the fire keeps the mosquitoes away for the most part, and the humming of voices and laughter and something about the fact that it is night and there isn’t anyone there who knows (to his knowledge, anyways) that he is the son of a killer and who thinks that he is right on the cusp of becoming one himself... it is nice. He can almost ignore the burning sensation that still lingers in his chest and head the whole time that the four of them are pressed together on one of the logs closest to the fire.

This is definitely one of the parts of summercamp that he’s always been left out on, and judging by the way that Tony reaches out to squeeze his knee lightly (and that relaxes him an extra degree, he just hopes neither of the girls notices it, and that he wouldn't have to think about it any time soon)- well, his friend already knew that. Either that or he was trying to get his attention.

Glancing over, Bruce notes that Tony is actually trying to get his attention, and he frowns just a little bit, leaning in so that the other boy can speak properly in his ear so that the girls can’t hear him.

“It’s time for the next dose, isn’t it? You don’t want to take it too late, or you’re not going to be able to sleep.”

Right, one of the actual benefits to having a partner that Bruce hadn’t thought of. Of course he hadn’t really thought of himself as being someone who would ever get distracted by any of the teenaged shenanigans that might go on at the camp, either, but here he is.

“Yeah, we gotta go... over there,” he says abruptly, standing up and dislodging Betty a little from where she was leaning slightly against one of his legs. She had that look from earlier on her face a little, and he felt that mixture of confusion and frustration that he had obviously done something wrong again.

“Gotta take care of nature’s business” Tony filled in for him, offering both of the girls one of his best winning smiles, and Bruce isn’t ashamed of the way that he feels jealous of his friend’s ability to make people feel much more at ease so much more easily than Bruce can.

The girls just nod, but Betty doesn't look hurt anymore, and lets them go with nothing more than a slightly disgusted look, and once they’re behind a thick patch of trees, Bruce pulls out the little bundle from his pants pocket. “We should do it quickly, I don’t know how many other guys are going to actually come out here to do their business.”

Tony pulls out the alcohol packet and wipes down Bruce’s skin lightly, giving him a look that shows that he clearly thinks Bruce is half the genius that he is. “The washrooms are about five steps down the path there, Brucie. Pretty sure that most of the wealthiest, never having camped in their lives, rich kids are going to opt for running water.”

Bruce makes a sound of agreement, though he does feel properly chastised, and he’s got something of an embarrassed flush moving in an ugly pattern down his neck. He doesn’t know why he didn’t think of that, but he knows that under normal circumstances (meaning that had he not had Tony’s firm grip holding onto his arm) he probably would have been able to come to that conclusion on his own. He’s really going to have to sit down and write out the list of side effects of this medication properly. Just to be on the safe side. He wonders if the warmth from Tony’s hands can be considered one of the side effects, but he isn’t really that sure yet. It just feels different from Betty's hand on his skin, and he's not sure what to make of that.

“Just do it, please.”

Tony presses the needle in with another sigh.

This time he is definitely ready for the way the heat burns through him, hot and unrelenting and he has to actually grab on to Tony just to hold himself up at first, just until he can catch his breath which is stolen away at the initial intensity of it. He just needs a second until he can catch himself.

“All right. Okay, I think I’m all right now. We can go back.”

He doesn’t feel all right at all, actually. He can walk, though, and he imagines that the fire must be pretty close to over. If he can just make it through the rest of that without doing anything weird like fainting or anything else embarrassing, then he’s sure that it’ll be all right. He should be able to sleep off the rest of the side effects.

The rest of the fire is a blur to Bruce, he doesn’t remember most of it by the end of the whole thing.

He’s not sure what happens to him for the rest of the night, all he knows is that the next morning, he wakes up naked and cold and entirely alone in the woods far outside of his own bunker. His initial assumption is that the heat must have gotten to him and that he must have gone searching for a way to cool his body down or something. Not the worst way that he could have done it, he just hopes that nobody saw him streaking naked through the woods in the middle of the night.

The heat must be a side effect of having irradiated the serum in with the gamma rays. He's worked with them a little in the past, but this was the first time that he'd gotten so intimately acquainted with them. It is just a part of the process, though, he needs that radiation to boost the serum, to make it powerful enough to work in a short period of time.

Moving proves to be another thing that is hard for him to do, though, as just getting into a sitting and then standing position pulls protest from every muscle in his body as he tries to stumble back to the bunkers. It’s barely light out still, so there’s no doubt that he still has time, but whatever has happened to his body in the time that has lapsed from his memory-- Bruce isn’t sure what it is, exactly.

Something more alarming than a little bit of burning in his hands and feet, that’s for sure.

Getting dressed and ready for breakfast is an extremely slow process, and Bruce is so busy being glad that nobody seems to have missed him at lights out or anything like that, that he doesn’t focus too much on the way that it feels like each of his muscles have been tugged or yanked or something far past their own capacity. He also tries not to think too much about the scrapes and bruises that are scattered over his chest and thighs, assuming that they’re little more than some kind of sick compensation from the forest for daring to run through it naked in the middle of the night. He's just glad that they can be covered by his clothes.

He’s actually pretty sure he’s right about that one.

Breakfast itself is a bit of a jittery affair for Bruce. He feels like everyone must be staring at him. He can’t remember anything more than the blurriest of details from after his third injection, and he doesn’t know what he might have done, only hoping that it wasn’t anything stupid.

There’s not really any question as to what Tony might have done after the injection-- Pepper’s fingers are lingering on his arm a little longer, and when she leans in to talk to him, her lips brush against Tony’s. The whole thing makes Bruce feel a little uncomfortable, something twisting in his chest in a way that he doesn’t really want to over analyze, and when he turns to Betty, she’s smiling a little shyly at him.

Now he’s even more confused. He’s pretty sure that he wouldn’t have-- Tony wouldn’t have left him alone, he doesn’t think (but he doesn’t really know Tony that well, hadn’t know him that long so how is he supposed to really know anything?) but obviously he had been left alone at some point.

He just offers Betty another small smile, making sure not to pull away this time when she squeezes his hand lightly, though he feels that stare right on the back of his head doubly as hard as he had the morning previous. He has to turn around to see, just to be sure, and he’s right-- General Ross looks almost furious with him, and that’s all the hint that he needs to pull his hand away from Betty, excusing himself and moving to get as far away from the table as he can.

On his way towards the door, though, he can hear a group of the boys from his bunker talking, and it’s their words that make the bottom of his stomach sink out.

“Didn’t you see it last night? I didn’t think that anyone would be seeing anything like that this far south. I thought that they needed to live further north-- but they said that it wasn’t even that hairy, from what I heard-- Didn’t look that human at all! Just huge and green! The weirdest Sasquatch!”

“I heard it just roared and ran away. Twice the size of a human man, but it could have killed them. They said it looked real mad, too. I bet that Clint won’t be making out with anyone anymore by the old washrooms from now on.”

Something about it freezes Bruce in place and he finds that it’s hard to breathe. He’s still for long enough that he feels Tony’s hand on the small of his back, pressing him forward before he realizes it. The touch is like fire, and he jumps away from it, turning to face his friend, a slightly wild look on his face.

“What’s up, big guy? You’re starting to scare the girls a little bit.”

“What happened last night?” And if there’s a touch of desperation in his voice, Bruce can’t masquerade it with anything, because all he can feel is desperation, all types of desperation that he feels completely at odds with.

“Before or after you left the campfire early? You sure freaked Betty out last night. She’s been trying to get her freak on with you, and you keep ducking her. Is this because of the serum?”

“What? No, I’m not-- this isn’t-- I’m just not-- Betty’s a friend, I’m not interested in-- she’s pretty, and I like her but--”

He frowns a little, running his fingers through hair that’s now tangled with sweat. Right, he’s overheating again. He’ll have to write that in the journal as well. It’s definitely a side effect of the serum.

“I need to go for another injection.”

That’s probably the problem. He’s late for his morning injection. Nothing to do with weird talks about people seeing a random Sasquatch last night, or waking up naked in the woods last night, or the sick feeling that he gets when he thinks about Tony kissing Pepper at the fire last night.

What is wrong with him?

“I’ll come with you, make sure that you get it done right. You’re looking a little green around the edges.”

Bruce just shakes his head, holding up his hand as if to fend Tony off. “No, I’m all right. Thanks, Tony, but I’m just going to go and lie down for another hour before the hike today. Didn’t sleep that well, it’s faster if I just do it myself.”

And he runs. It might be a little cowardly of him (or a lot), but he feels safer when he’s running, and something tells him that he can’t handle having Tony touching him right then, anyways. Something different is going on than he’d expected, and he’s not sure how to document it, but at this point he’s pretty sure that it’s something that he has to do on his own. He can’t have anyone who might think even for a second that they need to have an adult involved. It would ruin everything.

Besides, the only people they could tell already know about his father and about the murders-- at least one of those people already expects something out of Bruce that equals to what his father did, and no matter how small this complication might be... it might be that one thing that would be enough to have him institutionalized or something.

He just doesn’t know, and there’s nothing worse than not knowing something.

The injection is not quite as bad as it had been the night before, only making him feel that same hot uncomfortable feeling that was starting to becoming familiar to him,  and a little drowsy, with just a little bit of irritation around the edges. He makes sure to write it all down in his journal before laying down and closing his eyes.

Waking back up after only an hour or so is less comfortable, and he can’t help the way his arms come up to protect himself as he sits up quickly. Tony is standing there, giving him an unreadable look, before he just shakes his head again. “You’re going to be late for the hike if you keep sleeping. Hurry up and get changed. Bring your tags, journals, and the serum, I have something to show you up there, so make sure that you’re comfortable, too.”

Tony’s words make him feel a little bit wary, but he changes quickly, and gathers everything that he’d put together for the experiment. As much as he’d been thinking about just doing this on his own, they’d already been working together for the past week on it. It’s not like he could take that time back-- it is what it is, Tony already knows, and he could do what he wanted with that information. It’s with a sense of almost dread that he follows him out of the bunker and out to where the rest of their group is meeting for the hike.

Careful to hide his research away in his shoulder bag, he swallows hard and makes sure to stick by Tony. It’s become pretty common for everyone to see them together now, so the rest of the campers tend to leave him alone-- it’s actually pretty nice. The novelty hasn’t quite worn off, yet.

It’s not until a little more than halfway into their hike that Tony grabs his arm (and he has to pull his arm away, because he’s pretty sure that his chest isn’t supposed to get _that_ hot when someone touches him), and gestures for him to follow him. They sneak off with as much stealth as two seventeen year olds sneaking through a densely wooded area can manage, sticks and dried leaves making way too much noise under their feet as they move.

Bruce is pretty sure they’d fail if they ever had to be super spies or anything like that.

Eventually, they come to where Tony has obviously been bringing them, stopping right in front of what looks like a very, very large bush. Bruce just offers his friend a fairly unimpressed look, shaking his head until the other boy reaches forward and pulls the bush forward a bit to reveal the entrance of a small, messy looking cave.

Tony has obviously been there before, and fairly recently too, because there is a makeshift cot and a long table that is half covered in blueprints for what looked like more little robots like the kind of robot that Bruce had stepped on that first night, along with some other blueprints that he doesn’t recognize. Maybe for a glove or boots or a suit of some sort. He isn’t really sure. That wasn’t the most important part, though. The most important part is that Tony was showing this to him. Obviously sharing this with him.

“You have to have a little more imagination than that, big guy. I found this place last year, kind of figured it would make a good bachelor pad, but an even better secret lab if we needed it.”

Bruce just nods, reaching into his shoulder bag to pull out his books and his journal, placing them neatly on the side of the table that Tony obviously cleaned off for him. It is an incredible gesture for someone that he hasn’t known for that long. It is really nice, and he glances back at Tony, smiling honestly and wiping at some of the sweat over his brow. Definitely overheating a bit. Which reminds him that maybe he could keep an extra set of clothes here in case he ends up running naked through the woods again.

He really hopes that won’t happen again, but just in case it does.

“Thanks, Tony, I don’t-- it’s, uh, it’s really nice of you to share this with me. I guess it’s safe for us to be out here? No bears or anything?”

“I’ve never seen anything. Oh, except that some of the other kids are talking about some giant green Sasquatch that they saw around yesterday. Clint said it tried to attack him until he scared it away, if you believe that kind of thing, but I’d say we’re pretty safe. If I’ve never been attacked before, I doubt we’re suddenly going to be now, right? I’ll keep you safe, anyways, don’t worry.”

Bruce just stares at Tony, and tries to figure out why he feels sick again.

“Another thing-- give me your tags.”

Bruce raises a brow, but lifts them up over of his head and hands them to Tony. “What are you going to do to them? We still need them to get into the barracks and stuff, don't we? I mean, uh, wait-- where are yours?”

Tony just shakes his head and tuts at Bruce. “Brucie, Brucie, I haven't been wearing my tags for three days and you haven't even noticed. I've figured out how to make it so that we don't have to wear them anymore, so that if we get caught up here or anywhere else, we'll be able to run and move as easy as any of the counsellors without making any noise. It also means that you don't have to leave behind that annoying digital footprint every time you go someplace.”

Bruce tilts his head but leans back against the table to watch as Tony grabs for a few of his tools and begins pulling the tags apart until there is just one small chip left.

“Really? That's it?”

Tony just nods and shrugs a little. “They don't think any of us have the balls to take their stuff apart, they think we're their little monkeys.”

He just makes a sound of agreement, because that's hard to argue with, considering that he planned on being that way until the day he'd decided to experiment on himself.

“Now come here, we're going to implant this in your skin just at your wrist so you can just swipe your wrist. It'll barely hurt.”

Bruce isn't sure how much he believes that, but he goes with it because he trusts Tony, stepping forward and holding out his wrist so that the other boy can carefully carve into his wrist with another of his tools, carefully implanting the little device there.

It hurts, but he's not going to be the first one to say so, and instead just bites down on his bottom lip until he can taste coppery blood. It's not the worst pain he's felt. It doesn't even hurt as much as his body aches when he wakes up in the woods in the morning. It's uncomfortable, though, and he doesn't want Tony to know that.

“There, finished. You did better than I thought you would.”

Bruce just offers Tony a slight glare, and the other boy grins at him.

“At least we match now. It's like tattoos, but way cooler.”

The next couple of days follow the same pattern. Bruce finds himself waking up closer to the cave, though, and is able to get dressed early enough to make it back to the bunker in time to be counted and brought down for breakfast. The noticeability of the heat hasn’t lessened yet, and he assumes that it’s the reason that he’s leaving his bed in the middle of the night to run naked through the woods. He’s not sure why he can’t remember doing it, except that it might be some sort of sleepwalking phase. He can occasionally recall the fuzziest of memories of things that he’s done in the middle of the night.

Unfortunately, the amount of rumours about that Sasquatch are increasing, and it’s put him on edge. They’re getting louder, too. More and more details. He’s green and large and always so very angry. Every time that someone sees him, he roars-- sometimes he chases them a little, but usually he runs away. He’s always a distance away from the compound, and it’s always the campers who have wandered away for one reason or another who see him.

They also say that he’s always naked, and they only see him at night.

Bruce is worried that one of his nightly runs is going to have him meeting with the Sasquatch at a very inopportune time when he won’t be able to protect himself.

He’s more careful now, not to let anyone touch him. Especially around the time of his two daily injections. He feels as exposed as a nerve, and the touching is always extremely painful. Tony is aware, and he has learned to keep his hands to himself-- Betty seems to have come to a different conclusion, and looks hurt whenever she glances at Bruce at breakfast. He wishes that he could just tell her what is going on, but her father being who he is... he absolutely cannot risk it.

The nightly injections are always administered in the cave now, too, though Bruce still hasn’t told Tony about his nightly adventures in the woods (still a little worried that his friend will want to involve someone else in their experiment if he finds out). Bruce stays in the cave, and Tony goes back to the bunker-- it wouldn’t do them any good at all, if both of them were found out of their beds.

It’s a routine that actually works quite well for the both of them, and Bruce is pretty sure that the serum is having some effect on him- he can certainly lift at least thirty pounds heavier than before, and his allergies haven’t bothered him the whole time that he’s been taking the serum. Considering it had only been about nine days since he had started administering the serum, he was counting it as a success so far.

When he told Tony about this, the other boy just smiled at him and patted him lightly on the back. “Of course it’s a success. The two smartest people in this camp working on it, of course it was going to start working!”

Of course he hasn’t been telling Tony about the side effects-- the worst of them, so maybe that might have changed his opinion, but still, he feels warm and pleased with the praise nonetheless.

That is the closest that he’d gotten to telling Tony about the extra side effects: in that moment when he’d turned around and seen the other boy smiling at him and very obviously proud in what he was showing and sharing. He’d never known anyone like Tony, and he’d definitely never known anyone that could make him feel as confused as he was starting to feel.

Why did he feel like he could trust this boy that he’d only known for such a short period of time with the secrets that could ruin the experiment that he was willing to risk his own health for? It just didn’t make any sense.

Actually, the better idea is for him to figure out exactly what’s going on with the serum in order for him to make any kind of adjustments that he can so he can put an end to the side effect or just learn to deal with them-- that way nobody would have to know. The obvious result of that decision has him spending as much time as he can sneak away for the following two days in the cave (and the mornings after he’s woken up in the woods, because apparently that’s become a thing now), until Tony frowns at him over dinner on the second day and insists that he comes with them to the campfire.

Really, Bruce can’t think of a way to refuse that wouldn’t spark Tony’s now nearly infamous curiosity, and even Pepper and Betty have been giving him strange looks every time that he leaves any of their meals early, or bows out from any of the activities that are supposed to be mandatory. He knows that Tony has been covering for him, but eventually he’s going to have to start going to those, and... he’s really not making much headway except on the skin sensitivity issue. He thinks that he might have made a bit of an adjustment that helps with that, but it’s not much.

At this point he’ll count anything as a win, though.

He starts to really wonder where the side effects start, and where it’s just things about himself that he wasn’t aware of already. That night at the campfire the four of them are sitting at the same spot that they’d chosen for themselves that first night. It’s a little cooler than it had been the last few nights (Bruce likes it better this way, the breeze is nice and even though his skin isn’t as sensitive as it was before, he hasn’t perfected anything) and it’s dark, just the light from the moon and the light from the flames of the fire casting shadows over their faces and illuminating them.

Betty is shivering a little, but she’s not leaning into him more than just a little bit. He feels bad, especially when he looks over and sees that Tony’s arm is thrown around Pepper’s shoulders and her face is pressed into his neck. He wonders first about putting his arm around Betty. She obviously wants him to do that, and she’s really nice. She’s smart and pretty and she was the first person who had said a word to him at the camp. She smells good, too, and despite having a father whose gaze seems to follow Bruce everywhere he goes... she seems remarkably normal. He likes that.

But he doesn’t really want to put his arm around her. Or, he doesn’t mind the idea of that as much as he’s really not interested in what, exactly, would come with that. The idea of being tied to a relationship, of the kissing and the touching and-- he doesn’t really know what else, but he knows that he cares about Betty-- just not the way that he almost wishes that he could. The normality that a relationship with someone like her might bring him-- he almost wishes for that, too, but it's really not what he wants, and he really doesn't want to hurt or use someone who has been nothing but amazingly nice to him since the moment he stepped off the bus. Especially not when she, for some reason that he just can't understand at all, seems to have feelings for him that he doesn't think that he can reciprocate. At least not when all of his attentions are focused on the experiment.

Her father really would kill him then, too, he’s sure of it. But he’s pretty sure that’s not why he isn’t attracted to her in the way she wants him to be. He glances back over at her and offers her a small smile, anyways, shrugging off his light jacket and offering it to her. He can tell from the look on her face that it’s not what she wanted, but he doesn’t really know what else to do. She takes the jacket from him anyways.

Glancing back over at Tony, he catches Pepper leaning in to press her lips against Tony's, and by the way his stomach flips in on itself as he watches their light kiss, he knows that the reason that he’s not attracted to Betty, the reason that his hands are balled tightly into fists on his lap instead of being wrapped around a pretty girl’s shoulders... it’s definitely something much more confusing than the fact that Betty’s father is terrifying or the fact that he's trying to focus on his experiment.

Excusing himself from the fire is remarkably easy after that. He doesn’t feel guilty or anything, he just feels a desperate need to get as far away as possible. To try to gather his thoughts, to try to figure out what’s going on.

So he’s attracted to Tony. He can deal with that. Probably. Or it could be a side effect of the serum. Or, well, okay it’s probably not that. It’s probably just that he’s attracted to him. But he’s never dealt with anything like this before. He’s always just been about dealing with his experiments and keeping himself as far away from trouble as possible. He’s found girls pretty before, Hell, he finds Betty pretty, but he never really thought about anything specific in his jerk-off fantasy. It was mostly just about getting that extra energy out of himself than anything else.

Setting up the cave to be the most convenient place in the whole camp is actually a lot easier than Bruce would have thought possible. He’s built himself a small machine to test his blood, and hooked it up to his laptop, and with the way that Tony had hidden the cave, Bruce even felt comfortable enough to leave those things in the cave. His journals were there, too, tucked safely under the cot and covered with the extra set of clothes that he made sure to keep there.

He was grateful to Tony for having given him a place like this to share, but ever since that night at the campfire three days ago-- well, Bruce had taken to the avoidance route. Taking the most portable breakfasts, and getting out of the mess hall as quickly as possible so that he wouldn’t have to spend too much time trying to think about why he was so interested in switching places with Pepper. Somehow he didn’t think that all of his staring was going to go unnoticed for long, and he couldn’t really afford to lose Tony as an experimenting partner-- and he really didn’t want to lose him as a friend.

Not to mention that he still had no idea how to talk to Betty. He had no idea how someone could possibly tell one of the prettiest, smartest, nicest girls that they just had no interest in them in any kind of romantic way. He liked sitting with her and listening to her talk about the advancements in neuroscience that she was currently reading up on, or even any of the stuff going on at home for her (especially those things that did not include her father), he just couldn't force himself to want more than friendship from her. He figured that he could probably place some of the blame on the fact that she had to have noticed that fact that her father was definitely spending more of his time than was normal giving Bruce less than friendly glances, but a part of him didn’t think that would be fair to her at all. He didn’t want to hurt her.

Compounded with the confusing and extremely frustration realizations happening in his new found romantic life, Bruce was still struggling with perfecting his serum. He was still waking up in the middle of the forest every morning, cold and shaking and wet and covered in leaves and twigs and sometimes scratches that couldn’t entirely be explained away by crashing through woods at night. That and the memory loss were the worst of the side effects, the only ones that he couldn’t find any way to combat yet. It didn’t help anything that the rumours and sightings of the so-called Sasquatch were getting more frequent and more insistent. They were always the same, too, which was what was the most alarming.

The more consistent they were, the more likely they were to be true. That’s what Bruce had always been told, and the idea that he was spending his time in the woods at night with some sort of dangerous creature was frightening, and it made him more intent on finding a way to protect himself. He’d started arming himself with hunting knives that he’d found in one of the armouries, just to be on the safe side.

Bruce decided that it was the best idea the fourth morning that he’d been avoiding every friend that he’d made at the camp, when he’d been trying to make his way out of the cafeteria, and he’d noticed a huge group gathered in the corner. A slight panic built in him, and he made his way over to where they all were, hunched over something.

In the centre of the group was one of the girls-- he thought her name might have been Natasha, but he hadn’t really been taking the time to learn too many people’s names here. He wasn’t the best at making friends, anyways-- and she was holding a photo. It was like one of those instant Polaroid photos that you could get, and everyone was talking over each other as they passed it around in the circle. Bruce only got one good glance at it, but that was all he’d needed.

The Sasquatch. Well, it wasn’t really a Sasquatch. It had kind of looked like one, but-- it really was green and big and slightly hairless, except for the hair on its head which was just like a person’s. The hair on its chest, too. Legs and arms and hands and feet-- it was like a person. It was like--

Bruce got a good glance at its face in the picture and felt a wave of nausea roll over him as he turn on his heel. Tony was right behind him, an unreadable look on his face. He can’t deal with that right now, though, not on top of everything else, and so he turns a little and runs as quickly as he can in the other direction.

Running was always the safest escape.

He has to get as far away as he can, he needs to get to the cave, has to get to his journals and all of his information. He has to get to his science where he can hopefully disprove what he thinks is going on, because... because it can’t be true.

It only takes him an hour to get back to the cave and to get his journals out and spread around him. He doesn’t know why he hasn’t realized it earlier (he’s supposed to be a genius and everything, why hadn’t he put all the pieces together?), aside from the fact that probably nobody expects to turn into a strange Sasquatch like creature in the middle of the night. It’s unbelievable to be thinking of himself as a creature that had been terrifying other campers through the nights that they had been there-- to have been the monster that had destroyed two of the labs and one of the workshops. But at least he hadn’t hurt anyone yet. Yet.

Bruce can barely breathe, can’t catch his breath as he clutches the most recent of the journal entries to his chest. How had the serum managed to mutate this way? He hadn’t foreseen any kind of side effect like this one. Hadn’t even heard of something like this happening-- but it explained why his muscles felt pulled and stretched every morning.

It explained why the edge of irritation lingered when he woke up every morning, and why that heat just never went away.

But what was he supposed to do? He couldn’t tell anyone. He couldn’t tell any of the adults that worked there, they all knew about him, knew about his father... they all expected something horrifying from him, expected him to do something wrong, something against the laws of humanity, and who knew what would happen to him. They could institutionalize him for this, couldn’t they? They could put him in prison for this, or make something up just to get rid of him. They could turn him into a giant science experiment, and do who even knew what to him. He was more afraid of that then he was of turning into a giant green monster.

He’d been avoiding Tony for four days-- he couldn’t suddenly tell him something like this, and what if he wanted to tell the General or Director Fury? He couldn’t.

Bruce was on his own, and as he sat there, staring at his painfully normal looking hands, he never felt more like it.

It seems, though, that the more that he tries to avoid Tony after that point, the more Tony seems to hover over him. Popping up that afternoon in the cave to offer him a sandwich and some juice and to offer to help him with his injection that night. He just won’t leave, and Bruce isn’t sure how he’s going to get anything done. He’s actually been wondering about stopping the injections, curious if that would stop the effects of the serum-- but he’s so far into the cycle of it, that he doesn’t think that it would stop anything. He’s actually worried about rebound effects more than he is about anything else.

Tony still won’t leave, though. Bruce has no idea what it is that has happened during the day that changed things or made him think that he needed to follow Bruce around, but he seems pretty set on that decision. Something about it makes Bruce feel fairly uneasy. He doesn’t know what to do with himself, and so he just goes about his usual business-- or at least maintaining the illusion of usual business. He takes some blood and runs it through the machine. It's overactive, just like it had been the last week or so, since the first day he'd taken the injection. He makes a few more notations in his journal.

But Tony still won’t leave.

Eventually, though, Bruce knows that they’re not going to have any other choice than to go down for dinner. People will start to miss them (and Tony especially, he’s not really like Bruce who can get away with going missing in activities that aren’t involving General Ross) if they don’t get back before then, and Bruce doesn’t want to risk the time that he’s been able to sneak away every day.

They go together down to the mess hall, and the silence between them is no less awkward or uncomfortable than it had been up in the cave, and Bruce isn’t really sure what to say to lighten the mood. Usually it’s Tony who takes it on himself to lighten things up, but he’s not helping things, either... and he’s not sure why. It makes Bruce feel even stranger about the whole situation. He has the feeling that the other boy is suspicious about something, but there’s no way that he could know. Absolutely no way-- he’d been way too careful to let something like that happen. Bruce hadn't even known about the situation until just now, and it had been happening to him, so how could Tony have figured it out?

Both Pepper and Betty look surprised to see Bruce when he sits with them for dinner, and that’s as much of a hint as any that he hasn’t been doing his best to appear normal over the last few days. He’s going to have to work on that, especially now that he’s aware of exactly how abnormal he is. He can’t afford any extra attention paid to him.

It’s especially frustrating that he can feel twice as strong the way that Ross’ gaze lingers on him as Betty leans across the table to ask him where he’s been hiding so much lately. He lies to her, of course, and tells her that he hasn’t been feeling that well (and actually, that’s not too much of a lie, because all of the changing back and forth between being a giant green Sasquatch and just a regular- or slightly smaller than average- teenager, hasn’t left him in the best shape), still careful not to touch her, despite the way she reaches out for his hand. Her father is definitely watching them now and he’s working on distancing himself from this as carefully as possible, anyways.

He tries to eat as quickly as he can, doing it while trying to ignore the feel of Tony’s gaze on him, too. The gaze is heavy and it's an almost physical weight on him as he eats. Normally, he craved that kind of attention from Tony, he thinks, but it feels almost ominous.

It’s weird how much he’d gone through all that time back home, spending so much time fading into the background... and now, he couldn’t make himself more visible if he tried. He’s still not really sure what Tony’s angle is, just that he hopes he’ll be able to shake the other boy off in time to get back to the cave and try to newest batch of the serums. If he really is the Sasquatch (and he knows at this point that he really, really is. That was an extremely naked, extremely telling photo, with a particularly visible birthmark to boot), he needs to keep himself as far away from the camp as possible.

Even though he does actually manage to finish his food before Tony, the other boy stands up immediately after Bruce excuses himself, and they’re both getting strange looks from the girls now. It’s not doing anything good for the whole acting like nothing strange is going on, and Bruce really wishes that he could just say something to Tony because this is just making things so much worse. Why does Tony want to follow him back to the cave, anyways? It’s not like Bruce had been the height of excitement when they’d been there before or anything. It just didn’t make a whole lot of sense, unless Tony was starting to get suspicious of him... or something. But he hadn’t been that suspicious. He hadn’t even figured out his own secret until that morning. Or the part of it that had him being the Sasquatch, anyways. He hadn’t even told Tony the parts where he’d had to sleep in the cave because of the naked runs through the woods. So taking that into account, and maybe the part where he was avoiding everyone-- maybe he had been a little suspicious.

Though in all fairness, part of the reason that he had actually been avoiding Tony had been because he’d realized that he was attracted to him, and had nothing to do with the whole serum experiment at all, so that made a difference. Or it didn’t, except for that in the whole scheme of things and things that Tony was probably going to eventually figure out on his own, it probably made a heap of difference.

It wouldn’t make any sense for either of them to pretend like they’re not just going back to the same place, and so they walk back to the cave together in silence, the same slightly awkward silence that hung between them on the way to dinner. Bruce doesn’t like it. He much preferred the companionable silence that he’d grown used to all of those hours that he and Tony had sat together working on their projects. It didn’t help that this silence was charged (on his end at least) with the hyper awareness of every single movement that Tony made. He couldn’t seem to stop himself from looking over every couple of steps, like he expected something about the other boy to change while they were walking.

There is a chance that it isn’t helping the suspiciousness of his behaviour any.

By the time that they finally do manage to sneak away to the cave (and they’re careful-- Bruce is glad that Tony doesn’t seem interested in getting them caught or anything like that) the sun has already set, and darkness has already settled over the camp and surrounding forest. He’d felt somewhat comfortable in the darkness before, but there was a hum of anxiousness just under his skin now that he knew exactly what was to come. He just had no idea how long it was going to take until it happened-- was he just supposed to try to stay awake? Did it happen when the moon was hanging just so? How was he going to get rid of Tony? He had to make sure that Tony was safe, too, he couldn’t risk his friend’s safety. There were just too many variables, more than he had originally taken into account for the experiment, and it was giving him a little bit of a headache.

Tony goes straight back to his part of the work table, tinkering with the glove portion of the suit that he’d been working on for his project. Weaponized suit or something-- Bruce feels ashamed that he’s been so wrapped up in his own experiment that he hadn’t been paying as much attention to the things around him as he should have been (and obviously not even enough to his own, since it had taken him this long to realize that he had been turning into a monster every night), and he’d be lying if he said that the robotic limb that Tony is working on didn’t look cool.

Bruce really doesn’t need this whole scientific admiration thing to go with all of these feelings and thoughts and way too many dreams that he’s been having that involve Tony lately. It’s just not helping him at all. His gaze moves from the arm to his friend’s chest, lingering on the soft glow of the arc reactor, and he can’t help the way that he just stares as he sits there with his journals open in front of him. It’s a reminder of the ways that Tony is similar to him-- but in a way that his experiments were much more successful than Bruce’s own was. That’s what Bruce was striving for-- a way to improve humanity in a way that nobody else could, the way that Tony had. Only, in a way that could be shared-- which even Tony hadn’t managed to do.

“You should take a picture-- it’ll last longer, and you can do whatever you want with it in private without going to jail,” Tony’s voice knocks him out of his thoughts and reminds him that he isn’t alone and was definitely, definitely still staring at the other boy. Who was probably used to it, but that didn’t make it any less rude.

“I’m sorry, I uh, it was just--” but this was the first time that they’d really spoken all day, and Bruce was a little bit surprised that something as seemingly harmless as some staring (well, maybe not totally harmless on his behalf) had been what had started anything that could even resemble a conversation. “I was just admiring your hand.”

Well, that was pretty much the lamest thing that he could have said, and the mirroring reaction on Tony’s face told him that he agreed with that.

“Really? After four days of avoiding me and doing everything you can to pretty much be the biggest loner in the world’s history, you were just admiring my hand? That’s the best you’ve got?”

Tony is stepping away from his project now, and stepping closer to Bruce, but he hasn’t taken the glove off. Not that Bruce is afraid of the glove or anything. No more than he’s afraid of the rest of Tony. Which is actually a little bit right now. More because he’s not sure what he’s going to say.

His heart is starting to beat a little faster, and he tries to take a bit of a step backwards as he lets go of his journals, his hands curling into fists at his sides, blunt nails digging into the skin of his palms, and leaving what he knows will be little half moon marks there. He feels incredibly uneasy. Uneasy in the way that being around Tony can somehow make him feel, and then in that way that is completely foreign to him.

No-- it’s not actually completely foreign to him, not if he really thinks about it, but he’s not sure that he actually understands it, and he doesn’t want to think about what could be happening.

Tony is right in front of him now. They’re almost touching, and that’s enough to have Bruce’s blood pumping a little faster, and that uneasy feeling is washing over him again, a little more insistently again. He has to urge to get out of the cave, get out of there as fast as he can, because what is happening to him? He does try to take another step back, but there’s nowhere for him to go back there, and Tony is right in front of him, and the other boy has this look on his face-- brown eyes narrowed and angry and determined and Bruce has never seen him look like this before, but guilt pools in his stomach with the mess of everything else as he glances around for somewhere, _anywhere_ else to run to.

There’s isn’t anywhere to go.

And then Tony’s hands are on his shoulders and he’s yelling, and Bruce can’t even hear the words over the rushing of his blood in his ears and the twisting of something _something_ in his body. He has to get out now, something’s happening. _It_ is happening, he realizes with a jolt, and he glances up at Tony and just hopes that the other boy can’t see any of what’s going on inside of him on his face. He could never explain it.

“I’m sorry,” he manages, his voice deeper and barely to his own ears, even his own.

He shoves Tony hard to dislodge him and just runs as fast as he can, as far away from the cave as he can get, because he can’t let this Other Guy inside of him near Tony or any of the other campers. That’s what this whole thing has been about, hasn’t it? Keeping them all safe?

It’s hard not to wonder, as he feels for the first time (how has he never been so conscious for this part of the change before?) the way his muscles tear and pull and twist and change and his body is completely torn apart and put back together and it’s like the part of his mind that makes up Bruce Banner is shoved back onto the back shelf to make room for someone else. For a furious roaring beast of a half-man that he doesn’t even know-- is this really the price he has to pay for scientific discovery?

The last thing that he remembers before even that last bit of consciousness is taken away from him, is the mixture of comprehension and fear that had been in Tony’s eyes. He’d seen something there before Bruce had run off-- He might know something now, and that was something that Bruce was not going to look forward to having to explain.

For now he’s back to being the stranger in his own body as the monstrous darkness takes possession and forces him aside to do as it likes, and he can only hope that it won’t be anything that he can’t take back.

 

Waking up naked and sore the next morning is easily the worst of all of the other mornings that he’d woken up in the woods, and it takes double the effort to pull himself up and into a standing position when he remembers exactly what he’s going to be bringing himself into for the day. He’s going to have to deal with Tony.

He also can’t quite shake the fact that something-- something else-- is just not right. He still can’t remember the things that happen with the beast when he’s not in control, regardless of how hard he tries. Sometimes the best that he can get is a bit of a foggy blur, like the one time that he’d snuck into his aunt’s liquor cabinet and drunk a whole bottle of peppermint schnapps out of purely scientific curiosity. Nothing more than that, though.

Making his way to the cave, he couldn’t only hope that maybe Tony wouldn’t be there. It was extremely early still, the sun had just barely come up over the peak of the lowest mountains. Maybe he’d gone back to sleep in his bunker like a regular person would have after being attacked by their friend.

Probably not, though. Tony definitely wasn’t a regular person, and if he had been just a little bit suspicious of Bruce before... well, he was probably more than suspicious of him now.

When he gets to the cave, Bruce draws in a deep breath, closing his eyes for a second and calming himself down as much as possible. It was pretty obvious that part of what had happened the night before had been because he’d gotten over excited. Or at the very least, that hadn’t helped anything at all. The whole point here was to stay calm.. He was a calm guy. Or at least he could be, he was sure of it.

Or not sure, but he could try

It turns out that his fears are not unfounded at all, because Tony is curled up on the cot that Bruce’s clothes are under, and he has to step closer to him just to reach down and get them. The movement wakes him up, and Bruce almost jumps back and away when Tony sits up.

“Wow, so you always look like a Sasquatch, not just when you’re big and green?”

Really, he has no idea what he’s supposed to say to that, he’s just staring at Tony with his clothes hanging loosely in his hands until he realizes exactly what the other boy has said, and he clutches his clothes a little tighter to him, a deep red flush making its way all the way from his forehead down past his cheeks and neck to his shoulders and chest. Not really the look that he was going for.

Not that he was really going for a look or anything.

“I’m not-- you know I’m not a Sasquatch, that’s just, uh, that’s just stupid and not-- that doesn’t even make sense.”

He pulls on his clothes as quickly as he can, tripping slightly over one of the legs of his pants in his haste, but doing his best to look as less stupid as possible.

“Yes, because sense is what you’re going for right now, right big guy? You have a serious, seriously huge problem. Huge and green and huge. And green. When were you planning to fill me in? Fill anyone in?”

Bruce feels the flush get darker-- he knows he probably looks like a complete idiot, standing there in wrinkled clothes with twigs and dirt in his hair and a dark red mottled flush disappearing under his shirt, and he’d like to run again, but really... there’s actually nowhere for him to run anymore, and he doesn’t like that.

“I was dealing with it!” He insists, gesturing to where his work station had been slightly upended the night previous in his effort to get away last night. He’d have to clean all of that up. He couldn’t work in that kind of a situation. “I was working on a solution!”

“Really? It sure looks like you’re doing a great job of succeeding, too. The whole flying into a rage and turning into a Sasquatch, is a great look on you. I’m sure all the girls go for it.”

A frown does cross his face at that, and he crosses his arms-- it makes him feel a little less exposed after everything. “Not everything is about all the girls, Tony. This is about the science, this is about making this serum work-- I’m working on it. I’ve already started working on adjusting the mix, figuring out what’s mutating my genes and making the change happen, I just haven’t had much time!”

Tony just looks incredulous, leaving Bruce feeling more uncomfortable than he’s feeling. He hadn’t expected that maybe Tony of all people-- this boy that had befriended him and who he had so quickly (too quickly, his mind offered) trusted-- might not even believe him. Might actually have thought that he was doing any of this on purpose.

“You haven’t had much time? Are you kidding me? People have been seeing this thing for more than a week! You had all that time to tell me! I could have been helping you!”

Bruce lifts a hand almost like he’s reaching out for Tony, before he freezes and pulls his hand back. He can remember what happened the last time that and Tony had touched. Nothing good, obviously, and probably at least thanks in part to the feelings that he just can’t seem to shake off for the other boy.

“I didn’t know for the whole week! I only-- I just found out yesterday!”

And that secret makes him feel as vulnerable as having Tony see him change into that beast or see him naked that morning, because now someone knows that Bruce had been completely out of control of the experiment from the moment that it had begun. He squeezes his arms a little tighter around himself and looks away.

The only sound in the cave is the sound of rustling. Tony is obviously moving around, and that makes Bruce turn his head back around to face him, watching as the other boy stands. “Yesterday?” He doesn’t sound like he is sure that he believes him. “Then why have you been ignoring me for four days?”

Bruce lets his eyes wander around the room, looking for anything he can use to distract his attention from that question. He doesn’t want to answer it. Doesn’t know how to tell Tony that he’s been thinking about him in all of the ways that friends aren’t supposed to be thinking about each other. Doesn’t know how he’s supposed to explain that every time he sees Tony with Pepper he feels this twisted sickness that makes him want to move her and replace every move that she makes with himself.

Doesn’t want to admit to Tony that the moments that he can remember of being awake at night, he spends thinking of Tony, of imagining the other boy touching him.

He can’t tell him those things.

“It’s complicated, there were other side effects and I was just-- there were other things! I just-- can we just get back to the bunkers before we get caught, please? We can, uhm, we can talk about this later, all right? I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

It’s a bit of a lie, he has no intention of really explaining that bit to Tony ever, because he really doesn’t want to lose what he has in their friendship.

For a minute, Bruce doesn’t think that Tony is going to go for it, but the sun is definitely coming up now and they will be late if they don’t get going.

“Don’t think you’re going to get out of this one, Jolly Green. I’m not just going to let this go.”

Bruce doesn’t doubt that claim-- it was one of the things that he’d found appealing about his friend. One of the things that brought them to be friends in the first place.

Things are strange when they get back to the camp. There’s already a strange hum of activity, despite the fact that most of the campers are usually still asleep. He can hear people whispering in those exaggeratedly loud whispers that can be heard from either side of the bunker. He could make out something about one of the other campers-- Clint, one of the boys who Bruce had always seen climbing up high into the trees on their mandatory hikes-- it was something about him being attacked.

An attack just outside of the camp.

Bruce finds it hard to breathe for a moment, and Tony freezes beside him. They just stand like that for a moment while people run all around him, friends catching up with each other to make gossiping easier.

Apparently Clint’s leg is broken. He won’t be climbing anymore trees any time soon. Cuts and bruises but no other serious damage. He’d been attacked after sundown. In the woods.

By the Sasquatch.

Nausea rolls over Bruce and he turns on his heel and runs out of the bunker before anyone can really even see him (and he’s never been so glad that people form cliques and that he’s had such a hard time being included in them in his whole life), managing to get to just behind the bunker in time to start heaving.

It doesn’t help much, because there isn’t anything in his stomach for him to vomit, but it seems to be what his body wants. Somehow the motion makes him feel a little better, like expelling a little bit of that monster that lives inside of him.

He’d attacked someone. Somehow-- and he couldn’t remember it, which was the worst part (or maybe it was a blessing, since he doesn’t know that he could have stopped it)-- he’d attacked Clint in the woods during the rage from the previous night. He doesn’t know what had been different from the other nights, but something had changed and he’d really and truly become a monster.

“Hope that wasn’t your best attempt at perfecting your disappearing act-- you’re really not that great at it, big guy,” but he can hear the pity or something like it, in Tony’s voice and he has to swallow back another heave.

“I’m attacking people now, apparently that’s my new act.”

There might be a little bit of self-pity in his voice, but he can’t really help that. His chest aches with the knowledge, and he closes his eyes, not wanting to turn around to face Tony yet. He’s a little bit afraid that he might cry and he definitely, definitely doesn’t want anyone seeing that. Especially not Tony.

“You left that part out of your journals. The whole... creature of the night attacking trespassers fiasco.”

Bruce frowns at that and runs his fingers through his hair, wincing a little as it catches in messy curls. “It’s not in the journals because I had no idea that it was happening. We’re learning at the same time here, Tony. I’m not exactly in the position to be holding anything back.”

“You were pretty exposed this morning,” Tony agreed, giving Bruce a thorough once-over that he isn’t totally sure that he’s comfortable with. There was always something about the way that Tony looked at him that made heat pool in the pit of his stomach.

Now, though, it also made that slight uncomfortable wariness mix there, and he didn’t want that-- couldn’t have that, because what if it caused another transformation like last night? All that had needed to happen last night was for Tony to _touch_ him and he’d gotten a little too excited. Jeez, just how pathetic was he getting?

“Yes, I was. Thanks for that. I needed the reminder”

Tony stepped forward a little, causing Bruce to stumble back, his hands up between them. “Don’t touch me. You can’t touch me. Touch causes the change, or at least it makes it more likely to happen.” His hands are shaking a little, because he’s thinking about Clint in the medical ward with broken bones and bruises caused by Bruce’s inability to keep himself from changing.

From all of this science.

He’s going to have to stop taking the serum. The withdrawal symptoms, whatever they might be, they’re not going to be any worse than what this is. Besides, he missed the last night’s dose and the morning dose-- he just has to keep missing doses and hope that his DNA hasn’t mutated permanently. Has to hope that he’s not going to have to avoid touching forever.

“Betty touched you yesterday and you didn’t change.”

“That was different.” He doesn’t even think before he says it, and he kind of wishes he did.

Raising a brow at him, Tony tilts his head to the side a little, crossing his arms over his chest (and Bruce wonders not for the first time if that’s uncomfortable with the arc reactor to get in the way). “Different how?”

“We have mandatory activities, can’t we talk later?”

There must be something truly pitiful in his voice because after a minute of contemplation, Tony just nods and steps back, leaving room for Bruce to follow him. Small miracles or something.

Of course the attack on Clint has all of the counsellors paying extra attention to each and every one of them, and they’re all rounded up and counted before breakfast just to be sure that nobody is missing and that nobody else had been hurt. Bruce is glad that he and Tony had come back when they had and he almost wanted to sneak away to go and check on Clint- it would look really suspicious, though, he knew. He wasn’t close to the other boy, and they’d all already been told that he wasn’t allowed to have any visitors. The guilt still ate at him, though, and he wanted to do something, anything, to make the situation better. He just didn’t know what else to do. He wished that he were older so that he wouldn’t be left in such a useless situation as this, but wishing never did anyone any kind of good.

Trying to avoid Tony turns out to be another impossible task, too. The other boy seems determined to keep Bruce within sight as much as possible, like he knows that Bruce is planning to bolt as soon as he’s got the chance. Not that he knows where he’d go-- one of the worst parts of being stuck in this camp.

But at this point, he’s straddling the line of being a criminal, isn’t he?

It’s hard to think about anything else, he can’t even help the way his gaze lingers on Tony much more obviously than normal as they’re hiking, and he trips over his own feet three or four times. He’s still stuck on the part where somewhere along the line the transformations had changed enough to cause him to have a violent enough reaction that he would have attacked someone.

Or when they started happening because of things that were happening to him instead of just randomly at night.

Anxiety mixes with the guilt and by the time they’re making their way to the mess hall for dinner, Bruce can barely concentrate on where he’s walking. He nearly jumps a foot when a large, strong hand grabs him by the shoulder, and he tenses immediately, spinning around to face whoever grabbed him. His first guess had been Tony, but it was pretty obvious that the other boy isn’t that careless.

Eyes widening, he straightens his posture as best as he can almost out of instinct more than anything.

“General Ross.”

The older man’s face is red, his mustache twitching angrily as he hovers over Bruce. His eyes are shining angrily, and it makes something panicked twist deep in his gut. He has to stay calm, this would be the worst place possible for something to go wrong. All of the other campers are too close and if the General saw... it would all be over for him. Everything would be over for him.

“Banner. What do you know about the boy who was attacked today?”

Bruce does his best not to let even the smallest bit of his guilt show on his face. He can still remember the way that General Ross had hovered over him like this after his mother’s death, the way he’d offered so little consolation, but had instead been so insistent that Bruce had been holding back information about the case-- that he was protecting a murderer.

He’d just been a terrified kid at the time. He hadn’t really known what he was doing, just trying to save whatever bit of his family he had left.

Ross had thought he might have been involved in her murder, or even in the murder of the other people his father had killed.

The memory of that spikes hot anger through Bruce and he tries to hold on to the knowledge that he’s better than this, strong enough that he’s not ever going to be what Ross obviously expects him to be, even if he’s closer to it right now than the other man could possibly know. This is all going to be for the greater good, he has to believe that now more than ever.

“One of the other campers was attacked by an animal, right? He was in my bunker group.”

The look General Ross gives him is clearly disbelieving and Bruce knows that not for a minute does the older man think that Bruce is being honest with him. Not a big surprise there.

“You’re a smart kid, aren’t you, Banner? Like your father, right? You don’t honestly believe that an animal would just break a camper’s leg and then just leave him there without trying to eat him.”

Narrowing his eyes, Bruce crossed his arms over his chest. It really did feel better that way, safer and less exposed. “We’re all smart kids here, sir. I’m not sure why an animal would do that to him, but I’m not sure why you’re asking me, animal behaviour isn’t really my specialty.”

The anger is boiling a little hotter in his belly, and he really just wants to get far away from this place, into the woods where he hopefully won’t hurt anyone else.

Ross leans in closer to him, and Bruce can’t help but wonder if any of the other kids have stopped to stare or if this is going to count as another victim of people being too caught up in their own business to pay attention to the things going on around them. He wants to shrivel away, pull back and into himself, to escape as far away from the General as possible, but he knows what showing weakness like that would mean, and so instead he lets his fingernails dig deeply into his forearms, using the slight sting of pain there to keep him anchored tight to the moment.

“This is the kind of business that someone with a past like yours should be more careful to avoid-- you're the first kind of people that we would be looking at when our campers start getting attacked.”

Bristling, Bruce stands a little straighter. It doesn’t even matter in that moment that he _is_ the one who attacked that boy. General Ross has no idea what’s been going on, he has no idea that Bruce wasn’t in control of his body when that happened. All of this is a grudge that a grown man has against a child from years ago-- Bruce isn’t entirely positive that his presence in the camp in the first place isn’t part of Ross’ plan to keep an eye on him. A plan that has obviously backfired, and if only he knew just how much.

It made Bruce hungrier to make the serum work, to prove everything that the other man thinks about him wrong. The son of a killer isn’t necessarily bred to be a killer. He wasn’t going to end up that way. He just needs more time.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but if you think I’ve programmed a bunch of animals to attack random campers, you’re wrong, sir. I’m just trying to go to camp like everyone else.”

General Ross opens his mouth to speak, and Bruce is already tense and ready for an argument when he hears Director Fury barking out an order for the General. It’s obvious that it’s with a large amount of reluctance that Ross pulls away from Bruce and marches over to the Director, and Bruce hurries out of the mess hall. He doesn’t need dinner anymore, really doesn’t think he could stomach any food. Furious anger is swirling with guilt and panic in his stomach and he just has to get away. He can feel the worst of the sensations tingling beneath the skin on his arms and legs, tugging and pulling and burning and _hurting_ and he keeps running until he gets to the cave.

His breath is coming hard and he’s squeezing his eyes shut, pacing back and forth in the cave, his palms pressed hard to his eyes as he walks. He wants to get the picture of that man and his eyes and his expression and his moustache out of his mind. Wants to forget the look on his face and the way he’d sounded like he’d just known that the attack was done by Bruce without even having any idea about the Other Guy in Bruce’s head.

Bruce just wanted one moment to forget all of that. He needed it.

The moment is short-lived when the silence that he’d been using as something as a security blanket is ripped away by the sound of a voice calling his name over and over again from the entrance of the cave.

It’s Tony’s voice, and for a moment it’s like his body and his mind are warring with wanting to step closer to the other boy and draw some kind of comfort from his friend, and then the anger and frustration of knowing that it’s his feelings-- as confused and muddled as they are-- that are making this entire situation worse.

“You listening to me, Big Guy? I’m trying to talk to you here. You’re having a little freak out over there, it’s time to calm down.”

A sound that was too much like _His_ , too much like a growl, too much like the Other Guy, the other part of him, that was what escaped him as he turned on his heel to face Tony. His breathing is still heavy and his thoughts equally so. He can’t get Ross and his words and accusations out of his mind.

Flashes that hadn’t belonged to him before of a boy laying on the ground with his arms up to protect himself were assaulting his consciousness now, and no. He didn’t want those, either. It hadn’t really been him that had participated in that attack. Not the part of him that mattered, anyways, and it was important that he tried to remember that, especially right now, or it could destroy him.

“You should leave, Tony. This is probably going to end badly.”

But Tony makes no move to leave. Luckily, he makes no move to step closer, either. Just keeps himself at a bit of a safe distance, his hands up in something of a defensive posture the whole time. Right. A genius. Too easy for Bruce to forget if he wasn’t thinking about it.

“Let’s just talk this through, okay? You don’t need another change right now, not during full daylight where anyone can see you. Besides, you wouldn’t want to let that jackoff of a General get to you like that anyways, would you? What did he say to you, anyways, to get to you like this?”

Another growl escapes Bruce, and his arms come around his midsection. It helps if he can physically feel as though he is holding it inside of himself. If he can fight the change at all in any kind of way. It feels like he has some kind of control over it in that moment, even if it’s miniscule. Even if it isn’t really happening at all, or it’s just in his head. That’s good enough for him right now.

“I’m not my father!” He practically yells it, and it comes out in a voice that is barely his own, but that is so twisted and angry that he can barely recognize it. “I’m not a murderer!”

His shoulders and chest are heaving with the effort of his breathing now, and he’s leaning heavily against one of the walls of the cave as he squeezes his eyes shut to calm himself down as much as possible. Why does it have to be Tony? Why does it always have to be Tony, for that matter? It’s like every time he turns around the other boy is there.

Bruce really isn’t sure how he’s supposed to learn to deal with this attraction or these-- these feelings or whatever they are, if Tony is always there, every time that he turns around.

Tony’s hands are still up between them like he’s trying to placate Bruce somehow with that motion, and if Bruce hadn’t already filled his quota of just how crazy he was allowed to be in one day, he might have thought that he could _smell_ the fear that lingered in the air between them. He was frightening Tony, even if the other boy wasn’t projecting it in any visible way.

Maybe. He wasn’t sure how far this whole beast or monster thing was actually going, and smelling people was more than he needed to think about.

“Woah, woah there, I never said anything about you being a murderer, Bruce. You know I don’t think anything like that about you. I didn’t even know about your Pops, I don’t even care, to be honest. All I care about right now is that you’re looking a little green around the edges, and that’s a bigger problem than anything else. You need to seriously calm down. Haven’t you practiced any yoga techniques or anything? Anything at all?”

It doesn’t feel any better to hear that Tony doesn’t care about his father-- Bruce doesn’t really believe him, because he knows more than anyone that the other boy is more curious than anything else-- that bit of knowledge will probably become something later when their lives aren’t in danger.

Right now, Bruce isn't sure that there is much that would make him feel better. He just has to focus on even breathing as much as possible. There haven't been too many times in his life where breathing has been as important as it is in this moment (unless he's looking at it in a completely subjective way, in which case it's always been as important as this moment-- but that's just Tony's influence on him, he's pretty sure, because he shouldn't even be thinking things like that in moments as dire as this one is.)

For some reason, though, Tony seems to think that Bruce's tight expression, folded in body language, and slightly crazy eyes are an invitation to step forward a little closer to him. To his credit, at least he keeps his hands up in front of him in an offer of good will or... something. Bruce isn't sure. That's about the only smart thing that the other man does. For a genius, Bruce is pretty sure that Tony is an idiot.

“What are you doing? Stay away from me, Tony. Can't you tell that I'm about five minutes away from a full nuclear meltdown?”

Tony just shakes his head and takes another step closer to Bruce, and now he's pretty sure that the other boy is pretty much completely crazy. He heard all sorts of things about Tony Stark and his need for adventure and he knew that all teenaged boys had some kind of addiction to adrenaline and doing things that would ultimately get them mixed up in the worst sorts of trouble (usually teenaged girls), but this went above and beyond that. This was Tony putting his life in danger for absolutely nothing. For Bruce.

“Calm down, Big Guy, I'm going to help you through this one. We're not going to let your Jolly Green side out if we can help it, all right? You just need something to ground you, that's all. Not the boring go to your room without dinner kind of grounding, either. I'm talking about the, I'm here and just hold tight, this is the real world kind of grounding. The kind that makes you stay a scrawny and weirdly hairy teenager instead of the camp's favourite mascot for the night. I'm going to be that thing, okay?”

Bruce's chest feels tight at that, and his heart beats just a little harder at the thought. Tony is just being a good friend, he knows that much, but it's hard not to think about everything that he'd just declared and how much he'd wanted to hear words just like that coming from the other boy, but just for another reason altogether.

Damn, he was way too far gone for Tony, and it was definitely going to be a problem.

“It can't be you.”

He forces himself to say the words, even though he knows that they'll sound cruel. He knows that Tony hasn't had a lot of friends. Not real friends, anyways. He's seen the way people will flock around him to admire his money and the things that he has, or even just to bask in his knowledge. But they never seem to stick around long enough to count as friends. Bruce knows how lucky he is that Tony has let him stick around, knows what a privilege it is that he's been able to count himself as Tony's friend for this long-- but what difference does it really make if he wrecks it this way, or if it's wrecked later when Tony finds out that he's been hiding _feelings_ for him?

Aside from horrible embarrassment and humiliation on Bruce's part, of course.

The thought of Tony finding out about those feelings and laughing in his face, or of being disgusted, or worse-- the pitying look he might have for Bruce-- they all mix together in his mind to make him feel nauseated and a little dizzy, and it doesn't do anything to help with his breathing at all.

He can't rely on Tony for more than he already does. Can't be grounded by him any more than he already is, because if their lives are tied together any tightly than this, well, Bruce doesn't know how he would be able to stand it.

These teenaged hormones really had picked the worst time to come at him, really.

“Why can''t it be me?”

Right, Tony's still here. Bruce had been so caught up in his thoughts and in holding himself so tightly that it would be impossible for the Other Guy to fight His way out, that he had almost missed the way his friend's shoulders had sagged just a little bit at his response. But Tony's eyes (and they were so dark and so determined and Bruce hated that he hadn't been able to say no to him, even though they had only been friends such a short time-- and no, he had never believed in pre-destined meetings or any of that garbage before this, but he also hadn't really believed in monsters) had just narrowed a little, and instead of looking like he was upset and was going to leave-- which was what Bruce had thought was going to happen-- he just looked, well, he looked pissed off. He actually looks really pissed off.

“Why can't it be me, Bruce? Do you need me to go back to the camp and get someone else? Because you sure as Hell haven't really been making a lot of friends there, either.”

And Bruce takes a step back, because he's not sure what to do with Tony when he's angry. He's not really sure what to do at all, but Tony's anger has distracted him a little from his own, and that's a little bit of a good thing.

Until Tony does the one thing that Bruce hadn't been counting on.

He reaches out and grabs Bruce's wrist tightly, squeezing it.

It's like fire where his hand touches, and Bruce recoils immediately, his whole body squeezing in on itself as he jumps back.

“No! You can't touch me!”

This time Tony does look both surprised and a little hurt.

Bruce can't bring himself to apologize, though, because Tony's touch on top of everything else has kickstarted his heart rate and it's off to the races and he’s really fighting it now, doesn't want to change in front of Tony again, doesn't want Tony to know that just his touch and words is enough to make him feel like this.

“Why does this happen when I touch you?”

But Bruce knows that this time Tony is barely talking to him, because his voice is lower and more like the tone he uses when he's trying to figure out the solution to one of his own equations.

“I've seen Betty touch you, I've seen Pepper touch you. Some of the other boys in the dorm have touched you--”

Bruce can't take much more of it, though, he's losing the battle against the Other Guy in his head. Can already hear the low growls of his voice in the back of his head and has to reach up to pull of his glasses, placing them with shaking hands on the table with his journals.

His shirt is next, and he's flushed and humiliated when a sharp cry escapes him.

His body is changing and tearing and pulling and _exposing every nerve and muscle and bone_ and it's excruciating, and Tony reaches for him.

“Don't touch me!” He growls in that voice that isn't his. He's heading for the entrance of the cave, he has to get far away, as far away as it takes to keep Tony safe, when he glances back one last time.

The look on Tony's face in that last moment tells Bruce the one thing he'd been most afraid of.

Tony had figured it out.

 

It's almost like once he'd figured out that he and the Other Guy were sharing the same body, he'd become privy to more and more of the happenings of the other personality in his head. It's like being in a half-dream state that he has absolutely no control over, of course, but he can remember stumbling through the woods and he can remember chasing animals, or other campers away from whatever territory he'd decided was his own. Luckily, he can also remember that that night... he doesn't attack a single one of the campers.

Which is why there is even a single iota of relief mixed in with the heaviness of grief and dread that exist in the pit of his stomach, when Bruce makes his way back to the cave that morning. So maybe Tony had figured it out. He'd figured out that somehow Bruce had gotten just a little too attached to the one of the first friends he'd made in way too long, and things had gotten too complicated. Or maybe-- maybe if he was lucky, Tony hadn't figured anything out. Maybe Tony had just... No. Bruce wasn't stupid, that look had been the look of a boy who knew what he knew, and Tony might have only been seventeen, but he was a genius and it didn't even take a genius to see the torch that Bruce was carrying.

To be honest, though, Bruce was surprised to see that Tony was still sleeping curled up tightly on the cot in the cave. He'd figured that the other boy would have turned tail and run back to the barracks after he'd realized what was going on on Bruce's side of things. He probably just wanted to make sure, or something. He was a scientist, after all. He needed the kind of proof that only came with a confession... or something. Bruce wondered if he could just lie it away.

He hadn't ever been a very good liar to people that he actually cared about, but he could always learn. Probably.

Regardless, Tony is shivering a little in his sleep, and Bruce is exhausted, too. The transformation left his body feeling sore and worn out and like his body just didn't fit any part of itself anymore. It was probably the best time for a conversation, because it was the time that he was the least likely to have another incident. He dresses quickly, but just holds his glasses in one hand as he stands over his friend. He has to be ready for things to change.

One slightly trembling hand reaching forward, he shakes Tony just hard enough that he is sure one shake should be enough to wake the other boy up.

“You could die out here without a blanket, you know,” he states, willing his voice to be as steady as possible. He doesn't want to sound weak, that wouldn't be the best way to start any kind of conversation like this.

Tony wakes up a little faster than he thought, but then he was probably not used to people shaking him awake, either. They just stare at each other a moment before he sits up. The silence that hangs between them is awkward, and Bruce doesn't really know what to say after that. He'd been the one who had been naked and green the night before-- in his opinion, he'd been exposed enough for a lifetime.

“So you turn into a Sasquatch whenever you get too excited or upset?”

Bruce flushes at that and crosses his arms, glancing away. “Whenever my heart rate gets above about 205, that seems to be the trigger.”

Tony hums a little, and nods. “We'll have to get you something to monitor that better. They make watches for that, you know. Sports watches. I can probably make you one.”

Bruce blinks a little, biting down on his bottom lip. It was hard to believe that he might have imagined what he'd seen the night before, because Tony was definitely acting like everything was normal.

“That would probably help manage where I change, if I have a better idea when it's going to happen.”

His voice is cautious, he's still not sure what's going to happen here. Tony's expression is still a little guarded.

“You should stop taking the serum, too, it's obviously not working.”

“I stopped it a few days ago. I-- I can't tell if it's taking time to wear off or if it's too late...” He hopes that Tony gets what he's saying, because talking about how he thinks that the serum has bonded with his DNA makes everything seem even more real.

“Then we should be working on something to make you stop changing, or to make you change less. Why haven't you been doing that?”

“I-- Well, I've been kind of busy with the whole actually dealing with the changes--”

Tony's angry with him, he's starting to get that, he can see that in the lines of the other boy's face and in the weirdly matter-of-fact way he's being about everything.

“Tony, I--”

“And you're attracted to me, so you've been avoiding me.”

And there it is. All out in the open. Only Tony had said attracted to instead of 'having feelings for', and Bruce doesn't think he should correct him, because he really doesn't want to sound any more pitiful than he already does.

“I haven't been avoiding you, I just didn't know what to do about everything. It's a lot, the whole changing and then-- I've never been-- you're my friend.”

“So you thought 'Yes, avoidance really is the key to success in this instance!', I can see why you got a scholarship to this camp, it all makes sense now. You're brilliant.”

Bruce flushes darker now, the kind that always makes his whole face turn a dark shade of red before traveling down past his shoulders and chest.

“What was I supposed to do, I've never exactly been attracted to one of my friends before,” he sounds almost pleading now, because really. He's never actually found himself particularly attracted to anyone before. Not to the point where he was thinking about their eyes and lips and hands-- and Tony's hands are great, his fingers are thick and long and... he gets very distracted by them. He doesn't know how to behave.

“You should act like the rest of the horny teenagers at a science camp act! You talk to the person you’re attracted to, and if you're lucky you get laid and then you move on!”

Hearing it like that makes Bruce's chest tighten just a little and he knows it probably shows on his face as he shakes his head a little. That's not what he wanted at all. Or, well, he wanted that a little bit. But he was attracted to more than just that about Tony. He was also attracted to the way Tony's face looked when he worked on his stupid robots, and the way he laughed at the dumbest jokes, and how he was one of the smartest kids at the camp.

Bruce wanted more than just to sleep with him. That was the problem.

“You think I should have just told you that I wanted to sleep with you? What would you have even said? What about Pepper?”

Tony looks at him incredulously.

“What about Pepper? Pepper is Pepper, she's great, really, but she doesn't belong to me and I don't belong to her. We're a summer camp thing, man. I'm not saying that we would have hooked up, but-- I don't know what I would have said, you didn't ask! I probably would have said yes, it could have been a good time.”

Shaking his head, Bruce makes a frustrated sound.

“It doesn't matter, I couldn't have asked you! I turn into a giant green monster every time that someone touches me! Or-- every time that you touch me!”

It's embarrassing to admit now, even though they both are aware of it.

“You're not attracted to anyone else here at all, are you?”

Bruce groans a little and covers his face with his hands.

“Obviously not, Tony.”

“Let's just work on trying to find a way to sedate that monster inside of you, and then maybe we can find a way to work out your... sexual tension problem.”

Bruce makes a small sound of indignation, glancing back up at Tony.

“Sexual tension problem? I don't have a sexual tension problem!”

“You do. It's me. Don't worry, I know I'm sexy. I smell great, I have great hair, too. This body is just to die for. You're not alone, we'll work something out.”

He sounds really honest, is the worst part.

“Oh God, why do I even want to do this with you.”

_Why do I have all these feelings for you?_

 

The next week is strange for Bruce. He and Tony spend their days engaged in camp activities, doing everything that they can not to be late and to be as involved as possible. Bruce doesn't want to give Ross any reason at all to corner him again. They spend their nights in the cave working with a mix of sedatives that Tony had stolen from a fairly large selection of the counselors (and why did so many of them have such a large assortment of them?), working on a second serum.

Since stopping the original serum, Bruce hadn't been changing nightly, but he still opted to spend his nights in the cave, just in case something did happen. Tony spent most of the nights with him, and it was still really strange for him to wake up dangerously close to spooning his best friend.

It was doubly weird to wake up that way with the knowledge that he was doing it while they were both aware of the fact that Bruce was attracted to Tony (and Bruce was starting to think that the attraction thing might be at least a little bit reciprocated, even if the feelings weren't). He liked it, though, it gave him the illusion of something that he was pretty sure that he was never going to get, especially if these transformations were something that he was going to have to live with for the rest of his life.

That crisis of thought was not something that he was ready to face before he had the other serum ready to sedate him, though. It would just be too intense.

It was a little bit unfortunate that he'd been so wrapped up in his experiment and so wrapped up in Tony, that Bruce hadn't realized that he actually hadn't come up with a secondary project for the camp. They had been at breakfast one morning with Pepper and Betty who were both chatting about their projects (Pepper was leaning into Tony, which made Bruce's chest feel tight and uncomfortable until he remembered what Tony had said, and Betty-- she wouldn't even look at Bruce anymore, which was weird) when he'd realized that he was going to be the only camper without a project. He didn't have time to come up with anything anymore, either. Not while he was working on a second serum to sedate the effects of the first serum that he'd created.

He'd just have to be a failure, unless he could somehow get the two serums together to work the way he'd wanted the one on its own to work-- it was a slim shot, though.

That night when they'd gotten into the cave, Bruce moved immediately to where his serum had been sitting in its refrigeration unit, pulling it out. It should be ready, and really-- he needed it to be ready. Right now, he needed to be successful at something.

“What are you up to, doc?”

Bruce glances over his shoulder to Tony, offering him a small smile, showing him the small vial of blue liquid. “I think this one's ready. I want to try it. I'm,uh, I'm ready to finally try it.”

Tony looks a little surprised at that, but steps forward anyways. “All right, you sit and I'll prep you. We started this together, you don't get to hog all the credit for the good part of it.”

Bruce just laughs a little, and hands the vial to Tony, waiting for him. It's just an alcohol swab later, and he feels the needle pierce his skin like it's nothing. The serum itself feels cool as it's injected, and it's a bizarre contrast to the burning sensation that the original serum had caused. He definitely prefers this.

“It shouldn't take that long to work,” he says, swallowing hard. It would be a lie to say that he wasn't at least a little bit nervous, but after the results of his last experiment-- really, not much worse could happen, right? He was still a scientist, and this was just part of it. This was just going to be the good part, he was sure of it.

Tony just nodded, and moved to get rid of the trash, coming back after only a minute or two. They just sit there in silence for a couple of minutes, staring at each other. It's easily as awkward as the day that they'd had the conversation about sexual feelings, and Bruce finally breaks their gaze, flushing just a little as he looks away.

It's only another three or four minutes before he feels the effects of it through his body, his hands and feet beginning to feel heavy and hot, spreading a comfortable warmth through his body before it settles in his chest.

“Oh.” Is all he says before he glances up at Tony with a slight grin. His heartbeat is even and slow, and it feels good.

“Working?”

Bruce just nods, running his fingers through his hair which is a little bit matted down with sweat. So that's a side effect, but he'd take it, it's not so bad.

“Good, I brought you something, too.”

Tony disappears from sight just for a second, before coming back with a small box, handing it to Bruce. When he opens it, it's a small sports watch that's obviously been modified to measure heart rate. Grinning a little wider, Bruce moves a little sluggishly to get it on himself.

“Thanks, Tony, this is great. Very fashion forward.”

It flashes 90 at him, and he breathes evenly. It's perfect. Tonight he doesn't have to be a failure.

“Everything is working. This experiment is working.”

Tony nods, though he looks thoughtful for a second. Bruce isn't sure what that expression means, but he's pretty sure that it's the same one that Tony gets when he's thinking about the best ways to get his robots to fight in order to get one to break the other in the worst way. It's not a great expression (except in the way that Bruce has thought about it way too many times when getting himself off).

Caught in his thoughts, Bruce doesn't notice when Tony reaches forward, until the other boy's hand is wrapped around the wrist without the watch, thumb brushing over his pulse point.

“It'll beep really loud when you get too close to changing.”

The watch flashes 95 at him.

“This is a controlled experiment, right?”

Bruce is looking at Tony carefully now, nodding. He feels like he's a step behind here, like he's missing something, and he's not sure what it is.

“I'm touching you.”

Bruce nods again, swallowing hard. “I know, I can feel it. The serum didn't paralyze me, it just sedated me.”

Tony just grins a little at him again, then, shifting until they're closer together.

“Remember how I told you that when you're attracted to someone, you should just ask them if they want to hook up, and then you can get laid?”

Bruce doesn't remember it exactly like that, but he nods anyways, trying to keep focused on the pleasant warmth of the serum in his chest.

“I want to hook up. With you, I mean. It would be a great way to test this serum too, don't you think? We're out here, too, it would be perfectly safe. In the name of science, if you want.”

Bruce makes a sound at that, because yeah. He wants to hook up with Tony really bad. He's been thinking about it since about the second day of the camp, but he isn't sure he ever wanted it to be like this. He knows for sure that he never wanted it to be in the name of the science, and he also never wanted it to be called hooking up-- but if this is what he gets, well... when is he ever going to have a chance like this again?

He glances down at the watch again. 98.

“Yeah, yeah, let's do it.”

It seems like that's all the permission that Tony needs, because then he's on top of Bruce like he's an octopus or something, arms and legs everywhere, and Bruce has never done this with anyone before. He's never had someone's hands all over his body the way that Tony's hands are sliding under his shirt, but he reciprocates, and makes a pleased noise when he gets to feel the seriously great contrast of soft skin and hard muscle that he finds there.

It's even better when his fingers slide further under the fabric and come into contact with the cool metal of the arc reactor. He wonders if he shouldn't be touching it, if he should keep his distance from it or if it'll hurt Tony, but there's this _sound_ that comes from his friend when his fingers slide over the smooth plating and the light is distorted for just a second, and he wants to touch him more. Wants to touch more of his body, and he feels about a hundred times more bold than he had just a moment ago.

Tony's making all sorts of noises as Bruce's hands move up and down across the skin of his chest, and Bruce finds it hard to keep thinking about how to move his hands (and of he scrapes his blunt nails just _so_ over Tony's nipples the other boy makes this really great kind of whine that Bruce likes) while Tony's hands are moving down to fumble with the button on his jeans.

He kind of hates jeans right now, because he wants to touch Tony, too, wants to feel more of him, but he would have to stop touching his chest to reach down and unfasten that stupid button to get into his pants (and they should invent something that does that for them, that's the next thing that they should do), but he's not sure which is more important in this moment right now. They're mostly just rubbing up against each other, and Tony has wedged his thigh up and between Bruce's and the friction is really, really great, and Bruce would love to kiss Tony, but-- but he's not sure if that's okay. That seems almost like it would be more intimate than what they’re already doing, and he’s not sure if Tony is the kind of guy who kisses other guys, or just the kind of guy who messes around with them.

Bruce doesn’t really want to think about that.

What he knows he wants to do, though, is not be in this position, he feels a little trapped, and in addition to the way that Tony is already making his heart race a little (in spite of the sedating effect of the serum, even), being trapped makes it feel like a little too much. So he wraps his arms around Tony and flips them over so that he's hovering over his friend, grinning a little down at him. This is better for right now. This is actually a lot better. He really likes the way that his knees bracket Tony’s hips, pinning him down, and how easy it is to jostle the other boy around just right, so that they’re pressed nice and tight together.

Now he feels like he can slip one hand down under Tony's shirt, fingernails leaving all sorts of red marks that will unfortunately be gone in the morning, his other hand coming down to work at the button on his jeans, tugging on the stubborn zipper, until that hand gets wrapped around the hard line of Tony’s cock. He really, really likes the way that feels in his hand. Not like his own feels in his hand, so much harder and it's thicker and hotter in his hand, he’s sure he can feel Tony’s pulse fast and urgent, too. He really, really does like it. He squeezes lightly, and strokes up and down, twisting his hand the way that he usually does for himself, and Tony shakes, moans, shifts his hips under Bruce.

It feels like success.

The only distraction, of course, is that Tony gets his pants open quickly, and the first contact of his hand on Bruce's cock is enough to make an extremely embarrassing groan fall from Bruce's lips as his head falls forward and into the crook of Tony's neck where he feels comfortable mouthing at the smooth skin there. It’s sweaty and it tastes a little salty, but he likes that. Likes that he can taste a little bit of Tony like this. It feels a little heady. Or more than a little. He really wants to taste more of him, but he doesn’t know how to go about bringing that up when there’s already a hand touching him like that. He really, really doesn’t want that to stop.

It's incredible. Nobody has ever touched him this way before, and Tony is touching him like someone who has obviously done it before. He doesn’t really want to think about that too much, but he’s almost kind of glad that it’s true because he’s really good at it.

His hand is curled just this side of too tight as he strokes up and down, slipping over the head, sliding pre-come with the tip of his thumb, and making the whole thing messier than he'd thought it would be. The friction is just right and it’s a little slower than he would be moving his hand if he were doing it to himself, but it’s still so, so good. More than good enough.

He would be embarrassed that he'd gotten hard and so close to coming so quickly, just from being jerked off by Tony, but he'd wanted it for so long, he'd needed it for so long-- he couldn't have stopped himself if he'd wanted to. Besides, he was seventeen, longevity wasn’t exactly his forte.

His hips are moving into the touch now, pressing faster, and his own hand is still wrapped around Tony’s cock, stroking him lightly, but not really moving. Just kind of sliding up and down with the force of the rest of his body as he shifts against Tony. It’s hard to think about the two things at once, and he’s just still on fire from where Tony’s hands are touching him, and that really seems like the most important thing. He wants to touch Tony all over, he wants to make Tony feel good, but it’s hard to think, hard to focus.

His lips pressed against the skin of Tony's neck as sucking a bruise that _definitely_ won't be gone by the morning, and he's not sorry.

The watch beeps once.

Tony's hand stops. They both stop.

“N-no...”

They stay almost motionless, Bruce's lips moving a little where he's panting against Tony's skin, and his hips rocking very lightly where he can't help himself.

The watch doesn't make another sound.

Tony's hand starts moving again, and he's jerking Bruce a little faster, like they both know that they're working on borrowed time now.

“C'mon, Big Guy.”

Bruce is trying to reciprocate the motion of his hand, and occasionally he manages to move his hand over the head of Tony's cock, but mostly just touching Tony is adding to the heat in his belly, brings him closer to the edge and he's so close already, his hips are moving almost restlessly and the bruise on Tony's neck is going to be massive by the time he's done, and Tony is shaking a little under him and he knows that his friend is into it because he's so, so hard and he can feel that wetness at the tip of Tony’s cock, and they're both desperate for it.

“Almost,” he promises, panting into Tony's neck.

The watch begins beeping again, this time several times and it's probably the most annoying sound that Bruce thinks that he's heard in his life. He's not sure when he's hated something as much as that sound.

“Fuck it,” Tony groans, twisting his wrist just _so_ , and Bruce lets out a sound he didn't know he was capable of making against Tony's neck as he comes hard and messy and still half in his pants.

He can feel the change happening and it's sluggish (he imagines because of the serum), and he pulls back from Tony regretfully (doubly so when he sees the other boy laying there with his cock so dark red and hard and curved up against his belly and his belly covered in Bruce's own come, neck marked up and face flush). He smells so good, he smells like Bruce and like _hot_ , and Bruce doesn’t even know what that means, and--

“I have to--”

“Go. Hurry. I can handle this.”

It takes him only  one embarrassingly long minute to strip his pants the rest of the way off and tug his t-shirt over his head, before throwing off his glasses and the watch before he’s standing there naked and messy and _changing_. One last look towards Tony.

“I’m sorry.”

Bruce runs from the cave faster than he knew he could.

This time the chilly, extremely lethargic (and that must be the worst of the side effects of the new serum, he’s going to have to iron that one out, it feels really heavy) naked walk back to the cave is a little faster, and Bruce isn’t sure what he’s supposed to expect. On one hand, he can’t really get rid of this little half grin that creeps up on his face every time that he thinks about what happened last. He had sex. Well, kind of. He’s not sure if it counts as sex if only one person gets off-- but he’s pretty sure it does.

It was pretty great sex, too. It was great sex that he was involved in and that Tony was involved in, and that they had both been enjoying before they’d been rudely interrupted, and he kind of wondered how far it might have gone. He kind of wondered what Tony would have let him do, if the Other Guy hadn’t chosen a really, really inopportune moment to just show up like that.

He’s a little giddy, if he’s being honest, because he wonders if they’ll do it again. The serum obviously worked at least to some extent. Maybe if they’re more careful next time, and make sure to get Tony off first, it won’t end with the same result with Bruce having to leave halfway through.

Next time.

That smile is still on his face until he’s only a few steps away from the cave’s entrance, and he thinks... what if there’s not a next time.

Bruce doesn’t know how the whole hooking up thing usually works. He’s never hooked up with another person in his life. He doesn’t know if it’s a one and done kind of thing, or if Tony will have the same itch to repeat it that he has.

His mind isn’t exactly helping him out when it flashes back that last image of Tony naked and hard and _wanting_ from last night.

Bruce hopes he still wants.

Yeah, those feelings definitely aren’t going anywhere. He thinks the sex might have made them a little worse, really, but he’s starting to get a little desperate, and he’ll take what he can get. The sex makes it easier to hide, anyways, he thinks. Everyone probably wears that funny look on their face during sex.

He’d been too busy trying to mark Tony as his in as many ways as possible to see what look Tony had on his face.

Trying to turn off his brain is pretty much an impossibility at this point, but Bruce is really starting to wish for it, as he pushes his way into the cave.

Tony is laying there, still, which is a relief. He hasn’t run away in any kind of blind, gay panic. Score one for Bruce. He is naked, though, which probably isn’t good, since it is so cold, but he’s also managed to get some kind of blanket into the cave when Bruce hadn’t been watching, so at least he is covered. He isn’t sure if he should wake the other boy up or not, but he looks like he is half a minute away from freezing to death, so it looks like facing the potential morning after is going to happen sooner rather than later.

Reaching one extremely heavy feeling hand forward, he shakes Tony lightly. “Hey, you’ve got to wake up.”

He was kind of feeling that way about himself, too. Like he needed to wake up-- the whole sensation of being heavy and half awake was a little distracting in and of itself. It was pretty obvious that he couldn’t actually lessen the amount of the sedative that he’d used, since he’d still changed last night (under certain duress, of course), but he had to find a way to try to get rid of as much of this side effect as possible, if he wanted to participate in everyday life as regularly as possible.

Just like the first time they’d been in this same situation, Tony wakes up easily, and sits up. The blanket pooled around his waist, and he was blinking a little sleepily at Bruce with something of a confused grin on his face. He definitely liked the way that looked on Tony, it was a good look, and even better to know that it was directed at him. It might have something to do with the fact that he was still completely naked, too,  but that wasn’t really something that he wanted to spend too much time thinking about right now. Right now he just wanted to bask in the morning after (moment after, even) that he hadn’t gotten to enjoy, thanks to the transformation.

“Good to see you’re a little less green this morning, big guy.”

Bruce just grins a little sheepishly, running his hands through his hair and shaking whatever debris is still stuck there free.

“Yeah, uh-- I mean about last night-- I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to just leave like that.”

Tony’s brows are just raised a little, though, and his lips are curved up into something of a smirk at the edges, and there’s just something about the whole thing and the way that the other boy seems so completely undeterred by his own nudity that puts Bruce on edge.

Turning away from Tony just for a minute, he reaches around and finds his own clothes, tugging them on quickly, flinching just a little when he realizes just what kind of a state he’d left his pants on. Dried come was definitely not going to be on the list of things that was comfortable to wear the morning after. He straps on the watch, too, and is glad to see that the reading for his heart rate is still really low. The serum must still be working.

It does feel like it’s working, that’s for sure.

“I’m used to handling things myself. Years of practice and all. Having someone run out in the middle, though, I’m pretty sure that was a first time thing for me. Given the circumstances... I’d have to say that it’s hard to hold a grudge over something like that, don’t you think? I mean, you get pretty big, I don’t know if I’d want one of those huge green hands handling my more delicate areas, you know?”

Bruce frowns a little, his whole face hot and flushed. It’s more embarrassing now that they’re talking about it, because it’s even more real somehow. Tony doesn’t seem to mind-- he even seems to think that it’s funny or something.

Which just kind of makes Bruce feel a little bit worse. Last night had been something of a _thing_ for him. Something important, and it had been (up until the point where he’d turned into a giant green monster) amazing. He’d never felt anything like it. He didn’t want it to be a joke.

“It’s not funny, Tony. You could have been seriously injured. I should have been more careful-- made sure the dose was higher, or tested it better before getting involved in something like that. It wasn’t fair to use you as a guinea pig in that situation.”

Tony just gives him a look that tells Bruce all he needs to know about his opinion on that comment, and shakes his head.

“I was the one who suggested that experiment, wasn’t I? I’m pretty sure it was my idea. Out of the two of us, you were the one who wanted to test the serum you’d been working on for a week by doing your best impression of a tree, and I was the one who had come up with the idea of actually doing something. And you feel better now, don’t you? I’ll bet it feels better now that you’ve scratched the itch. Everyone feels better after they scratch the itch.”

Bruce didn’t feel like he was better for having scratched his Tony itch at all. He was pretty sure that Tony was like his own personal case of the Chicken Pox. Scratching that itch was just making things more complicated and a hundred times more itchy.

“Still, I’m pretty sure that’s not what you were thinking when you suggested hooking up with me-- that I’d just leave right in the middle of it, I mean. I’m sure that doesn’t happen to you a lot.”

He’s toying with his glasses now, a nervous habit that he’d long since given up trying to get rid of. He actually doesn’t even know why he’s still talking, it’s like he just can’t seem to stop himself. He just feels like he owes it to Tony to properly apologize, because for some reason when he closes his eyes all he can see is that image of Tony laying on the cot staring up at him with brown eyes dilated so dark that they had practically been black, and legs still spread just wide enough to fit Bruce between them, and--

And he’s going to need to be alone somewhere if he lets himself think about it for too long.

The look that Tony gives him then is a strange one, like maybe he’s not as good hiding the things going on in his mind as well as he’d like to be.

“Running off in the middle of jerking me off isn’t the weirdest thing that happened last night, don’t worry about it. Besides, it’s not like it took too long after the work you put in, so don’t beat yourself up about it. You did most of the work, Big Guy, you should be proud of that much at least.”

A sound escaped Bruce at that comment that he was immediately embarrassed of, and he squeezed his hand around his glasses tightly. That mental image was probably one that he was going to be thinking about over and over mixed in with the memories that he’d already built up with Tony last night, but it made that nagging feeling of regret in the pit of his stomach just a little bit worse. He wishes more now that he’d had the chance to be like every other person that Tony had hooked up with (and he didn’t want to think about how many of them there might have been, because that was none of his business), and he wanted to be able to finish the job, for it to be his hand around Tony’s cock when he came and not to just have to imagine it to the best of his ability instead.

It was a little bit humiliating.

“Uh, thanks I guess?”

He’s not sure what the proper response is to that. Tony genuinely doesn’t seem to care that things were left for him to do on his own. Not nearly as much as Bruce did, anyways.

“Think about it on the bright side, man, at least now we know how to test your serum. Make it stronger and maybe next time you’ll be able to stay all the way through. This could be a great arrangement, lots of guys wish they could have an arrangement this easy, even if their jerk off partner has to run off in the middle of it. Friends with benefits really works for me, and you’ve got a great set of hands.”

“I, uh--”

“I have this robot back home, Dummy, it’s a pretty decent lab assistant like you are, but I don’t think I could get it to do what you were doing with your hand last night. It’s all in the wrist rotations, and you just can’t build that.”

Bruce opened and closed his mouth a few times, not sure what he was supposed to say. Next time. Another time. Friends with benefits. Again. He and Tony were going to have another chance at it, he was going to have another chance to really experience sex with Tony for real. If he could get his serum right-- which he was going to do.

It was almost enough to make him forget what Tony was talking about with his robot and an arm that could jerk him off-- almost. But not quite. The bottom of his stomach dropped a little, and it was all the reminder he really needed to keep him locked into reality that this is what it is. Friends with benefits-- not some romance or whatever. Tony was looking for something casual or something, he was probably doing this with a bunch of other people (not that Bruce was about to think about that for very long, he didn’t want to feel that in the pit of his stomach for more than a minute).

Bruce had to be at least a little bit of a grown up about this whole situation. Tony was certainly being adult about it (probably in more ways than were strictly healthy), and so why not him. He was perfectly capable of every kind of scientific exploration and experimentation. He was definitely capable of this.

He wanted it, too. He couldn't remember the last time that he'd wanted something as badly as he wanted that feeling of really belonging the way he'd felt with Tony last night. There had been a spark there, and an incredible heat that he'd never felt anywhere before, and then when he'd been about the change and it had all been mixed together with a sense of shame and humiliation that he couldn't even finish what he'd started-- there had been something of a sense of acceptance, because Tony hadn't laughed at him or yelled or anything. He'd just told him to go. He'd understood, because he'd been with him every step of the way.

Damn, none of this was going anywhere to helping him get over the other boy at all. He was making it worse, he was pretty sure.

“I don't think I've ever done friends with benefits, and I know for a fact that I definitely don't want to know what you build robot arms for in the basement of your house, Tony.”

“I'm a genius with robotics, okay, I could do great things for the adult toy industry--” and Bruce makes a bit of a face, because it's hard to tell if Tony is joking or not, “but that doesn't even matter right now, because we have more important things to figure out, right? Like how much stronger can we make the serum without making you completely useless in the sack.”

The flush is back with a vengeance, and Bruce glances away from Tony. Thinking about the serum reminds him of the fact that his arms and legs are still extremely heavy, extremely uncomfortable, and there's that fog in his head that he can't quite get past. Other things that he'll have to work through when he's adjusting his equation to keep him properly sedated through even stronger mental and physical stimulus.

For a moment it's a little hard to catch his breath-- it feels a little overwhelming, thinking about what he's trying to do, how he's trying to fix his life in what little ways he can. Like patching up an old blanket or something, only he hopes that it will be a more permanent fix than that. He's made  a bit of a mess of things, but it doesn't mean that he can't fix things. He still has a chance to make this serum into what it was supposed to be in the first place. This doesn't have to all have been in vain or anything like that, he can still be the hero of this story-- he doesn't have to be the monster.

Bruce doesn't even realize that he's been standing completely still, breathing heavily and just staring at the worktable, until Tony reaches out and shakes him a little bit.

“Hey there, big guy, calm down. You're not going to be useful to anyone if you decide to start having panic attacks all over the place here. You're supposed to be the one out of the two of us who has his head on his shoulders, right? Even if it isn't the more attractive of the two heads, but you can only do so much.”

Something about the touch and the strangely comforting tone of Tony's voice soothes the tension from Bruce's shoulders, and he blinks over to offer a slightly apologetic smile at his friend. His stomach is still in knots, and maybe more so even as he turns away and out of Tony's arms to make his way back to the table and the safety of his equations and notes and everything science that was supposed to be safe for him and had somehow left him high and dry the last few weeks.

“Sorry, Tony. I'm not panicking, just got lost in my own thoughts for a second. I, uh, just was thinking about what you said. About how strong the sedation should be without making me over sedated-- I have a few ideas, I just don't know how soon they'll be ready for testing, is all. I'm thinking that I'll have to find something to offset the side effects that usually come with the medications that I've been mixing together. There are a couple of things that I can try, I'll just have to be careful. I'll probably have to stay out here for a couple of nights, so you'll have to cover for me back at the camp.”

Talk about the science, yes, that's the best way to keep from thinking too much about that gnawing in his gut that's telling him that everything will be fine if he just lays back down on the cot and closes his eyes and curls up with Tony.

Hormones are obviously not his friend.

“I'm always covering for you at the camp, but it's pretty obvious that I'm not going to let you spend the nights out here on your own, Banner. Too risky when you're testing your cocktails, and we both know it. Besides, I was pretty sure that we went over this last night. Your experiments work better when there is someone around to test them with.”

Frustration bubbled inside of Bruce and he frowned at Tony, shaking his head. He honestly didn't know why it was so hard to keep him around when all he wanted was to be around him, and to get rid of him when he needed him to be gone.

“It could be more dangerous this time, Tony! I'm going to be testing this serum for you, too, you know. This time it's better if I work alone.”

“This isn't really the time for your Lone Wolf routine. There's no way this will be any riskier than what you did last night. It's the same serum just with a few additives, right? I can keep myself safe around you, I trust you.”

Something about that makes him feel a little sick in the pit of his stomach, and Bruce closes his eyes, shaking his head.

“I need to do this alone,” and he's pleading with Tony now, “I need to know that I'm not going to hurt you, Tony. I can't have you around and be thinking about you while I'm trying to make a real scientific discovery. You're too much of a distraction.”

Tony's expression changed minutely at that, and Bruce immediately wished that he could take back whatever it was about what he'd said that had caused that shift. He already wanted that other part of his expression back.

“Fine, Bruce, if you need to be alone for your experimenting, I'll leave you alone for it. But I'm not covering for you at meal times. You'll have to come to those on your own. You don't get to starve to death _For Science_.”

Bruce isn't sure that even he could dress as quickly as Tony did in that moment, and then the other boy was gone before he could even figure out what it was that he had said that had pissed him off so much.

Or why he just felt sick and miserable, instead of glad that he'd gotten what he'd thought that he had wanted and needed.

Attending meals wasn't exactly what Bruce had planned to be doing while he was working on the second phase of his sedation formula. So far it had been going all right. The only real side effect that he'd been experiencing had been vomiting and a little bit of blurry vision. It hadn't caused any shifts back to the Other Guy in the one night since he'd switched over to using it, which he counted as a win.

Tony had been strange at dinner, of course. He hadn't really paid much attention to Bruce. Hadn't looked at him or spoken to him beyond the courtesy 'hello' and 'how was your day' kind of greetings, and the girls had obviously noticed that something was up, but neither of them had said anything.

Bruce guessed that he should be glad that neither of them had brought it up, but both Betty and Pepper had always seemed a whole lot more intuitive than he was... and that was lucky for him.

“So Tony, what exactly did you get up to the last couple of nights?”

Pepper's voice is curious and definitely full of insinuation and when Bruce glances over, she has lifted her hand to pull the collar of Tony's t-shirt away from his neck to expose the (wow, that is seriously huge) hickey that stands out deep purple and red and a little yellow and green like a stubborn bruise against his skin like it exists just to mock Bruce.

Suddenly dinner is not something that Bruce is really interested in, and he drops his fork, swallowing what is left in his mouth, and glancing away as Pepper's long fingers slid lightly against the bruise in a way that makes it even clearer than it already had been that she is extremely familiar with Tony's body.

“I'd been wondering why I hadn't seen you around, but it's pretty obvious now, huh? You didn't even bother to cover it up! I thought you said no marks above the shirt? You obviously bent your rules for someone?”

Tony just made a sound that was similar to a laugh, but Bruce thought it just sounded mean to his ears.

“Not everyone plays by my rules, Pep.”

Food definitely wasn’t big on Bruce’s list of things that were interesting him after that comment. It really was all he could do just to keep what he had already eaten down. Also just not to stare at the mark that was being pretty openly broadcasted to their table right then.

He’d put that there. That was a hickey and he’d given it to Tony. During sex. Tony had liked it, too, he knew that for sure. If he closed his eyes and his hand, he could still feel the way that Tony’s cock had felt in his hand.

But he wasn’t going to do that, because he was trying to focus on the science part of the science camp right now. Also because he was in the middle of a very public dinner, and he hadn’t taken any kind of sedatives yet. He hadn’t really expected that he would need them.

He definitely didn’t like that Pepper was touching the mark that he’d made, though. He liked her and everything-- she was pretty and smart and she was really nice to him and... actually, she was nice to everyone. That wasn’t something that he could say about everyone, so it was good that he could say it about her-- but she was too nice to Tony. In that Bruce knew that sometimes she and Tony were also friends with benefits. Tony had told him as much, and... and he could practically smell it all over them.

Bruce thought he might actually be able to smell it on them, but that wasn’t something that he wanted to think about. A little more invasive than even he wanted to analyze. Though he probably would have to eventually, and he can imagine how that conversation would go.

He was jealous of her. Bruce was man enough to know that there was something like that going on in his gut as he watched her laugh and lean into Tony and be effortless in the way that she touched him. He hated that a little bit, and he couldn’t help the way that it tainted his feelings towards her.

Swallowing hard, he glanced down at his food, almost hoping that maybe it would have some answer from the universe for him-- no luck. But when he glanced back up, the first thing that he saw was Betty, and the way that her eyes were narrowed thoughtfully at him.

There was no way that was going to be good news for him. No way at all. She’d been acting stranger and stranger around him the more that he’d separated himself from the group, and a little colder since the last time he’d rebuffed any kind of physical advance she’d made. He felt bad about it, but it was hard to deny that his lack of attraction to her had something to do with the incredibly stupid attraction that he had to Tony.

All of it was making the fact that he was in the middle of trying to find a way to stop himself from turning into a great big monster every time that he got a little too excited... well, it was way more complicated than it needed to be. Definitely the last thing he needed was Betty’s gaze lingering on him like that.

The second last thing he needed was the sound of Pepper’s laughter as she leaned in and brushed her lips a little against the mark on Tony’s neck.

Actually, Bruce isn’t sure which order those two things should have gone in, but regardless he was starting to feel that claustrophobic itching under his skin, and he shoved out his chair from under him as quickly as he could without excusing himself, and made for the door.

It probably didn’t do anything to make him look any less suspicious to anyone around, but he was feeling too much of a mixture of the Other Guy emotions and those all too newly familiar regular teenaged emotions.

They were starting to get harder to tell apart at this point. He could probably write a paper on that at this point, and it would be completely fascinating to every adult who had ever thought that their teenager was just going crazy. Or it would just prove them right. Bruce wasn't sure that he wanted to prove anyone right, right now. He was feeling more than a little bit agitated at the moment.

He hadn’t even gotten to where the woods start, when Bruce hears the sound of footsteps behind him. He feels almost relieved, really, that Tony would have followed him. It would give him the chance to apologize properly for running out and he should probably apologize for leaving a mark like that, too. There were a lot of things that he should probably apologize for. More things than he could coherently think of at the moment-- becoming Tony's jealous girlfriend all on his own without anyone's permission should probably be somewhere near the top of that list. Well, up there with creating the serum that transformed him into a monster, but so far that was mostly an apology to himself and to science.

Bruce should probably also tell him that the friends with benefits things isn’t going to work for him, either, because it’s pretty clear that something like that would not be something that he would be able to deal with properly (the jealous girlfriend thing being a pretty good example of how much it is clearly not working for him already)-- but he doubts his own ability to give up the little bit of Tony that he’s managed to get for himself. It's that little bit of selfishness that he'd always known that he'd had, but he'd never known would hit him quite so hard. He almost wished that he'd just been worse at sharing when he'd been younger and better at it now.

Except not so much, because this was Tony, and Tony was obviously better than a Lego. Probably even better than his first Little Scientists kit.

He was probably just over thinking it, really. All of this thinking and thinking instead of just doing was probably what was turning an attraction to a fairly good looking, decently brilliant guy, into some weird emotional roller coaster of hormones and... Bruce doesn't really know what else, but he's pretty sure it has just as much to do with his own tendency to focus too much on the situation as it has to do with everything that is Tony Stark. He just has to let his logical mind come to terms with that. A lot of times, if it comes down to it.

When he turns around to face him, though, he’s a little surprised to see that it’s Betty standing there, breathing a little heavier like she’d jogged to catch up to him, some of her dark brown hair stuck to the side of her face and her neck and damp with a bit of sweat.

“Betty-- what are, uh, what are you doing out here? I was just going to head in for the night. Really tired and everything.” His heart isn't sure whether to beat a little faster because he's been chased down by someone who is obviously looking for some kind of confrontation, or to calm down, because at least it's not Tony.

“You know, Bruce, I knew there was something different about you when we first met here, and I know that you know who my father is, everyone knows who my father is--” no conversation that starts like that is going to end well for him, and Bruce is extremely aware of it “-- He told me to stay away from you, you know, said that you were different from the other boys here. Really different. It's just that you never seemed all that different to me, except that you were kinder and smarter and you never took me up on any of my offers of... anything. Not that I'm that kind of girl or anything, but you seemed like the right kind of guy and Pepper and I both thought it would be kind of cool if we could double, too, and you seemed interested enough at first.”

Bruce shifts a little from foot to foot, he has no idea what she means, but he does wonder exactly what Ross had told her-- weren’t there strict confidentiality rules in the government? Even with family members, he was sure. Ross couldn't prove anything, anyways, he shouldn't have been telling Betty anything about him. It had to have been breaking a dozen or so rules. He was going to have to check something like that out.

“But I think I’ve figured out what’s different about you. It’s not that hard to see, not if you’re really looking, and I've definitely been looking.”

That makes a bit of panic bubble in Bruce’s chest and he swallows hard, reaching out a hand in a bit of an aborted motion. “Look, Betty, I didn’t-- I can explain everything.”

He’s not sure how she could have found out about him. They were so careful in concealing everything from everyone at the camp... of course there was only so much they could have done, since they’d clearly been caught. He just hadn’t thought that Betty would have been the one that was going to catch them. People even had photos of the Sasquatch, after all, and it even looked a little like him. At least to Bruce's eyes, and if she was looking as closely as she was implying that she was looking-- who knew what she might have seen.

“You don’t have to explain anything, Bruce. It would have been nice if you’d just told me instead of playing this weird game with me. I would’ve understood a whole lot earlier. I’m a smart girl, you know. You should’ve known I would guess it eventually. We spend a lot of time together. Were you afraid that I was going to tell your secret? I wouldn’t. I won’t, I mean. I'm not cruel.”

It’s hard to breathe, and Bruce's hand comes to rest on his chest as he takes in a deep breath. The watch hasn’t beeped at him yet, and he’d like to keep it like that. Now is definitely not the time to panic. He’s guessing that even if she knows his secret, she wouldn’t be too keen on getting a fist row seat to seeing it.

“I couldn't tell you, Betty. I couldn't tell anyone. It was an accident.” He can't bring himself to tell her what he'd done, not even with her eyes wide and so weirdly understanding, considering that she's telling him that she understands that he's a _monster_. “I didn't-- uh, I mean, I didn't want anyone to know.”

She just shakes her head and steps forward into his space, her arms coming up and around him, hugging him close to her.

Bruce expects that watch to beep, his heart to race, and to have to run away from her in order to hide the transformation, and so he tenses his entire body for a moment. But nothing happens, and he lets out a long breath instead, relaxing into her embrace, letting his head rest very lightly, almost hesitantly against the top of hers.

He can't remember the last time someone hugged him like this, and it should frighten him, but he just feels safe.

“Are you sure, though. Bruce? It's easy to think these things sometimes, but sometimes you can just be confused. I'll stick with you either way, but you should be sure before you make any decisions for sure.”

That's definitely a strange thing for her to have said, and Bruce makes a bit of a confused sound, pulling back a little to look down at her. Her eyes look much bigger and bluer up close like this, and she's giving him a look that he can't read.

Bruce had gotten pretty good at reading people, especially lately, so this was unusual for him.

“It would be hard not to be sure,” he says slowly, frowning a little down at her.

She's chewing a little on her bottom lip before she gives a little nod that he's not sure is actually meant for him, and pushes up on her toes a little surging forward until her lips are pressed flush against Bruce's.

Definitely not where Bruce had thought their conversation was going.

The bit of panic that he'd felt when she had mentioned that she knew his secret flared back in his belly, and he wasn't sure what to do. He had no idea why she was suddenly kissing him. If her father had maybe put her up to it-- but she had seemed very sincere when she'd told him that she was going to stand by his side. But why would she want to kiss him after telling him that she knew that he was a monster?

The kiss only lasts a few seconds before he lifts his hands lightly to her waist and pulls her down from him. Her face is a little flushed, and he thought she looked like she might be a little bit embarrassed.

Well, that would make two of them.

If he hadn't been sure of whether he might be feeling a little more on the gay side than he had thought before, he definitely knew now.

Oh.

 _Oh_.

His eyes widened a little bit, and Betty finally looked back at him, her teeth worrying at her bottom lip a little again, and this time it was a little bit redder than it had been before. Because she'd kissed him. And he hadn't felt anything.

“Did that help you figure it out for sure?”

“You were trying to help me figure out if I was gay?”

It was a lot easier to say the words out loud than he'd ever thought they would be, especially when he'd thought that he was having a conversation that was much worse than this one before. It was easier, too, when he was having it with someone who was trying to help him-- who already thought she knew the answer for him.

“That's what we've been talking about this whole time, isn't it?”

“Yeah, I just-- I, uh, I didn't think that you would go that far to help me.”

She does flush a little at that, and shrugs one shoulder, the strap of her dress falling a little. Bruce feels a strange fondness for her in that moment, because he has no idea what he's done to deserve a friend like Betty Ross in a place like this. It explains her hot and cold behaviour towards him, though. If she thought that he was just playing her along the whole time.

He reaches out and straightens the strap for her.

“You're my friend. Besides, when else was I going to get the chance to finally kiss you, if not now?”

Bruce feels his own face heat just a little, but smiles a little. His relief makes him feel a bit dizzy, but he shakes his head. “You did help me. You're right, I know for sure now. I'm sorry that you felt like I was, um, if you thought I was leading you on. I didn't know for a long time.”

She just nods at him, toying a little with the hem of her dress. “I figured. It was pretty easy to figure out when I realized that you weren't looking at me as much as you were ogling Tony Stark for the last two weeks. You might want to get that under control, or other people might start to notice. Even people who aren't looking as hard as I am.”

He swallows hard, and nods. He knew that he'd been looking a little harder than he probably should have been, but he didn't really know how not to, and he glances away so that hopefully Betty won't see that bit of obvious feeling in his face.

“Oh, you've got it pretty bad already, don't you?”

Her voice isn't unkind, and he's so grateful for that.

“I've seen that look on Pepper's face for the past three summers in a row. I recognize it, trust me.”

Bruce's stomach flips a little at the mention of Pepper, and he tries not to think of her pressing her lips against the mark that he'd left on Tony. It's not her fault that Tony didn't feel the same things that Bruce did. She's a nice enough girl, too. Nice enough that Betty is friends with her, and that means something to Bruce.

He doesn't hate her, can't hate someone who didn't deserve to be hated, but for some reason, that doesn't stop the monster from clawing a little inside of him. The monster knows things that Bruce doesn't, understands things that Bruce doesn't.

“It's nothing, really. Just, uh, you know. A thing.”

“Oh, Bruce.” She just shakes her head and leans into him, and the smell of her perfume and the feel of the warmth of her body feels warm and calming again and he breathes a sigh again. He can still taste her lipgloss on his lips.

“You should go to bed and try to get some sleep and try to spend as much of tomorrow as you can thinking about someone who isn't Tony Stark. I'll help you find a nice boy, if you want. There have got to be some other guys like you around here, and we'll find the best one. Tony's not boyfriend material, trust me.”

Bruce just makes a slightly noncommittal sound and moves towards the barracks until he's sure that Betty can't see him anymore, and heads back and towards the cave. He feels completely exhausted for some reason.

When he gets to the cave, he's a little surprised to see that Tony is already there, moving around the table and working on one of the robots that he'd been building for the competition. Bruce had mostly expected him to spend the night in the barracks or somewhere with Pepper, and so he's not sure how to behave. He knows that he should probably still be thinking about ways to apologize for the way that he stormed out of the cafeteria during dinner, but he really doesn't want to anymore. He's tired and the whole encounter with Betty left him feeling exhausted and just completely tired of talking about feelings.

He especially wasn't really that into talking about his feelings about Tony.

Unfortunately, though, that's when Tony looks up at Bruce and there's something in his expression, something tight and a little unhappy that Bruce can't read-- and he knows that there's going to be some kind of talking.

It really was his fault for storming out of dinner, and so he opens his mouth to apologize. It's only fair, and he's mature enough to admit that much.

Tony interrupts him, though.

“I see you and Betty finally made up.”

Bruce's mouth hangs open. He's not sure for a second what Tony is talking about, and he actually has to go through everything in his brain to figure out what he could have possibly been talking about, before he realizes that Tony must have somehow seen Betty kiss him in the woods.

“I-- kind of. It's complicated.”

“It didn't look that complicated. I was wondering when she was going to make her move. I didn't think she'd be so bold, though.”

Bruce frowns a little, and shakes his head. “It wasn't really like that, actually.”

Tony lifts a brow, and Bruce can tell that he's giving him the look that means that he doesn't particularly believe him. It's a little demeaning, and he doesn't like it.

“We were just talking. The kiss was just-- it, uh, it wasn't anything.”

“I was more surprised that you let it happen then anything,” Tony kept talking like Bruce hadn't said anything, and that comment made Bruce's head snap up, and his own eyes narrow a little.

“What's that supposed to mean? I didn't-- what's that supposed to mean?”

“You know what I mean. You don't have feelings for Betty, I'm just surprised that you would lead her on like that. It's not like you.”

Bruce's whole face is hot with anger, and the watch makes one slightly indignant sound at him before he takes a deep calming breath.

“I'm not leading Betty on. I would never do anything like that.”

“Really? Because it didn't look like you were in any hurry to tell her no.”

Bruce's hands tightened into fists at his side and he shakes his head a little. “Betty already knows that I'm not interested in her like that. She kissed me, and I pushed her away. She was just looking for the answer to something, that's all. Not that any of this is any of your business or any of your business. You were just watching from the bushes, Tony?”

This time it was Tony's turn to have his face turn a little red, and he shook his head.

“You were the one who ran from dinner, I was coming to make sure that you were all right, but you already had company before I got there. I didn't know that you would answer all of your questions with a kiss nowadays. I don't remember you doing that before.”

Bruce makes a frustrated sound, shaking his head and throwing his hands in the air. “I left dinner because I didn't really want to watch someone sucking all over the bruise I left on your neck, Tony. Are you that surprised?”

He doesn't even know what they're arguing about anymore, but he's breathing a little heavier, and he has to close his eyes in order to calm himself down. Transforming into the Other Guy every time that he gets into an argument is not exactly the best way to win any of them.

As soon as he's calm enough, he pushes around Tony who is just standing still, and reaches into the cooler to pull out the sedation serum, administering his nightly dose. It'll only be a little while before it takes effect, and he's looking forward to the calm feeling after everything.

“You left because of Pepper?”

“I didn't say that,” he mumbles back, even if he kind of had said that.

“You did. You left because she was touching the mark you left-- is this some kind of possession thing?”

Bruce feels a little bit sick, and glances over at where his journals are stacked neatly. He should be writing down everything the had happened during the day and how the serums had been working together, but instead he thinks that he's going to have an argument with Tony about his feelings or something.

“I don't know what it is. I just-- it just is something.”

Being vague is really the only thing that he can do for himself in this situation, he's sure.

“You can't get jealous every time that someone touches me, you know. I get touched a lot.”

Bruce definitely feels a little bit sick at that.

“Especially if you're going to be going around getting touched by Betty.”

That gets his attention, and he turns around to face Tony.

“I'm not going to be getting touched by Betty. She kissed me to help me figure out... something.”

He doesn't want to tell Tony that she wanted to help him figure out if he was definitely gay or not.

“Oh, well it's the Big Green that's making you possessive like that, right?”

He sounds honestly curious, and Bruce just swallows hard and decides to shoot for some approximation of the truth.

“I'm not sure. It could be Him, or it could be... you know, the sex.”

Tony lets out a surprised snort of laughter at that, and turns to Bruce with a thoughtful look on his face.

“You were new at that, right?”

Humiliating, that's probably the right word.

“I thought that was pretty obvious.”

Tony just gives him a look and shakes his head a little. “That's probably why, then. You were so new at it and you've got Big Green in your head, it's perfectly natural. I call it the Virgin Syndrome. You'll get used to it. We'll just... until you're used to it, I don't mind practicing monogamy for a few weeks-- for science and everything. Sacrifices must be made and all that.”

Right, because they were having sex to help test the serum. Not that Bruce was writing too in-depth about that in his journals. He'd rather think that it was because Tony was interested in being with him. Whatever, he was seventeen, he was allowed to live in some kind of fantasy world.

“We don't have to do this anymore, Tony. It's getting out of control. We don't know if-- I mean, uh, this could just get really complicated if we keep going.”

That was as close as he thought he might be able to get to the truth without explicitly stating it. He didn't want to stop-- there were only a few more weeks of summer left, and he wanted to enjoy them with Tony as much as possible, but he had to be at least this honest.

“How much more complicated than this could it possibly get. We've written the book on complicated, Jolly Green.”

Bruce just offers him a small smile and leans back against the cot. The serum is starting to kick in, and he can feel the slight tingling in his fingertips. It's when the warmth begins to build in his chest that he'll start to feel safer for the night.

Tony is walking away from his robots to come and sit beside Bruce. Their sides are pressed flush against each other, and the other boy reaches out to circle a hand around one of Bruce's wrists, squeezing lightly.

The watch is quiet.

“We're still in this together.”

Bruce cares about him a stupid, stupid amount.

“It's working faster tonight.”

Bruce just nods, turning his head so he can look over at Tony, sighing just a little. He's definitely exhausted now. Betty and Tony and now the serum-- it feels like a lot.

“What was Betty looking for the answer to?”

That question does catch him off guard, and Bruce frowns just a little bit, shaking his head. “I can't tell you. That was her question, you know?”

His friend doesn't look particularly happy with that response, but there's not too much that Bruce can do about that. He just thinks that if he tells Tony that he thinks that he might be gay or something, the whole situation will change somehow, and not for the better. Who knows what it might change.

They just sit there like that for a while longer than Bruce would have thought that Tony could have been comfortable with, and even Bruce is sweating after only a few minutes (a side effect, he thinks, and he'll have to write it down at some point, since he forgot to do it last night), especially at the places where their bodies are in contact with each other, sticking a little in a way that should be way more uncomfortable than it is.

He's even been thinking a little about what it would be like if he turned his head to the side to face Tony properly. They're so close together that he'd only have to move just a little bit more, and it would be so easy to kiss him after that. It would be easier to measure the kiss against the one that Betty had given him outside earlier. Something, a voice at the back of his consciousness, reminds him that Tony probably wouldn't be as appreciative of something like that. It would take this thing past just two friends giving each other handjobs in a cave and make it something... well, it would definitely make it gayer.

He thinks, anyways. Or at least that part of him thinks so, and that part of him is really, really convincing.

Nothing about Tony in the last few weeks that Bruce has known him (or what Betty had insinuated to him earlier) had made Bruce think that his friend might be gay in any way. Well, anything aside from instigating the handjobs-- but Tony himself had said that those were in the name of science or something, and it had been just like jerking yourself off, basically. Only about a thousand times more intense and better, and Bruce would definitely have picked that over his own hand any time.

Of course now he got distracted by the thought of it every time that he tried to think about anything that was even remotely related to it, which was starting to become a problem. He wasn't used to having his thoughts be as muddled as they were right now. Right now, all he knew was that he really wanted to kiss Tony. Wanted to know if his lips would be as soft as Betty's had been (he guessed that they would be chapped and that they would press harder against his, and they probably wouldn't taste anything like cherry lipgloss, but he wanted to know for sure), and he wanted to know where Tony would put his hands when they kissed, and what kinds of sounds he would make, and if kissing him would make Bruce just as hot and tight feeling as touching him had.

Bruce has the feeling that it absolutely would.

He'd never been a coward, but his fear of losing Tony had become almost like a security blanket in and of itself by this point, and so he just swallows hard and licks his lips, glancing over to see the way that Tony seems to settle against him. The serum is definitely taking full effect now, heavy and warm in his chest as his arms and legs settled just as heavily on the bed as well, and he let the smallest smile grace his lips.

For the first time in weeks, he feels something that was almost safe.

It isn't until he feels a slight jerking against him a few hours later, that Bruce realizes that they fell asleep like that. A groan escapes his own lips as he shifts a bit, his body aching slightly. Sleeping in an upright position was really not what his body was meant for, and judging by the look on Tony's face, it wasn't really what he'd intended, either.

“Sorry, buddy, didn't mean to fall asleep like that. Too bad Jolly Green didn't make an appearance, I'll bet he would have made a great pillow.”

Bruce just rolled his eyes at Tony, and pushed him a little as he got up and moved over to his journals so that he could document the previous night in them.

“Very funny, Tony. I'm sure he would have enjoyed having a toothpick laying around, too.”

“Oh sick burn, Bruce,” Tony grins a little and moves over to where he's stashed his change of clothes, stretching in a way that makes Bruce feel the need to avert his gaze. It isn't fair to keep staring at him when it isn't clear exactly what they are doing.

But there is so much that he wants to stare at. Really, though, there is scientific documentation that needs to come first, and Bruce knows how to prioritize.

“So the serum is working, isn't it?”

Bruce glances up from his journaling to shrug a little in Tony's direction. “It seems to be. It's sedating me for sure, but I haven't been exposed to that much extreme stimulation yet. I won't know until it happens, and that's not always the best way to test it. I'm just glad I'm not changing every night. It's nice not to wake up naked in the woods covered in sticks every morning.”

Tony looks thoughtful, but nods at him. “We'll just have to continue with stimulation therapy, then. Tonight, probably, we can test it again. It's working better than it was the last time, so who knows... maybe you can stick around for the whole show.”

Flushing darkly, Bruce turns his attention back down to his journals. “I wasn't just talking about that kind of stimulation. I meant negative stimulation, too, but-- we should keep testing, that was the whole idea, right?”

And if he's being selfish about the whole thing, he's willing to accept that about himself at this point. He's not sure that everyone would be able to understand what he's trying to do with these serums, trying to save the military, trying to save the world in whatever way he can contribute to that-- but there had to be people out there who could understand a teenager trying to get whatever they could out of the person that they had feelings for whenever they could.

Even if there wasn't as much honesty involved as there should have been. Also a lot more danger than there should have been. But Bruce had been able to run away last time, without hurting anyone, so he was sure he could do that again if it happened again.

“You listening there, Big Guy? Or am I boring you?”

Bruce blinks a few times, almost dropping his pen before he lifts his head to look back up at Tony.

“Sorry, got distracted by some of my equations.”

“Of course you did. I was just asking you if you're sure you're still up for all of this. The soldier serum and the sedation-- it's a lot for a contest, isn't it?”

Swallowing hard, Bruce frowns a little and shakes his head. He thought that he'd explained it all to Tony before. How much more than that it is. He is sure that he has. But maybe it is hard for him to see. He is the only one seeing Bruce go through all of it, after all, it probably looks as bad as it really is. All of the failure. So much failure. More than he’d ever experienced. Such fantastic failures, too. But there will be success, he has to believe that. Tony has already experienced success-- he;s created the arc reactor, and he’s already half built an arm for the armor that he’s been working on. He knows success. Bruce is still in the middle of a fantastic failure.

And he is stuck with it, now. So he has to believe.

“It's not like I can change my mind, Tony. I'm more than a little bit sure that I'm stuck with this now. The Soldier Serum doesn't wear off. It's stuck to my DNA like super glue, and I can't think of anything that could get it off, so the only thing I can do is make it better, keep it calm and turn it into the success that it was supposed to be from the start. It's still going to be the serum that changes the world, I can feel it in my bones-- it's just going to take the long road instead of happening real easy like I was hoping it would. It's not about a contest, it doesn't even have anything to do with this place anymore aside from the fact that it's happening here. I just need to make it a success. This can't be for nothing. It can't be. You understand that, don't you?”

He hates how desperate he sounds there, he hates how much he needs Tony to understand him at least a little bit, because Tony is the only person he has anywhere who understands this part of him. He doesn't want his pity, though, he just wants him to understand.

It's not pity that's reflected in Tony's expression when Bruce looks back up at him, either. It's an almost cocky grin, and he's nodding.

“You don't have to sell it to me, Big Guy. I already know that you've got it in you to save the world with this thing. I think Big Green is part of it, too, I think you're already most of the way there, and I'll be your number two the whole way. We're in this one together. I'll be Frankenstein and you can be the monster. We'll be the best pair that the US Government has ever seen.”

Bruce isn't sure that he shouldn't be offended by the Frankenstein comment, but he's just too relieved that he can't stop the grin that's on his own face.

“Thanks, Tony. You're right, we're going to save the world. It's definitely not going to be with any of these damn robots that you keep leaving all over the place, but we'll save the world.”

Tony gives him the finger and they both go back to getting ready for the rest of the day in a comfortable silence. It's the best Bruce has felt since he'd realized that he was the Sasquatch.

The whole day is a lot easier than Bruce thought it was going to be. He spends a lot of it with Betty, Pepper, and Tony. Tony and Pepper seem to have gone back to their 'just friends' routine, which lightens Bruce's shoulders a little. Betty keeps giving Bruce that knowing little look, but her smiles and laughs are much easier than they had been in the last week, and it's comfortable being around her again. He finds himself glad that she'd confronted him, because he'd almost forgotten how much he really liked being around her.

He even lets himself be dragged into the lake for a water fight later in the day, the girls pleading with both he and Tony. It's extraordinarily hot, even for the nights that they'd had over the last few weeks, and there's really no harm in it. It's fun and it gives him an excuse to wrestle with Tony in the water, close and slippery and wet, and it's almost too much. Almost.

The watch only beeps once before he's pulled away by Betty who can't even possibly know the favour that she's doing him.

The only negative of the whole day is the way the General stops the group of them on their way to dinner that night, pulling Betty almost bodily away from them. Anger bubbles up inside of Bruce when he sees the man, and he remembers what Betty had said, how he'd told her to stay away from him, how he'd said that Bruce was different from the other boys, how he was trying to stop her from even being friends with Bruce-- because he thought that Bruce was a murderer. Because he was different.

She does return to dinner, though, her cheeks flushed a little but rebelliously pressed against Bruce's side for the whole meal.

“Are you okay?” He asks, reaching out to brush a little of her hair away from her shoulder. He's not worried about giving her the wrong impression now. Now he's just worried that she's in trouble because of him.

“I'm fine, my father is just being an ass like I told you yesterday. He just won't let it go, but it'll be all right.”

She offers him a bit of a watery smile, and he feels his chest tighten just a little before returning it.

He hears someone clearing their throat, and glances up to see Tony giving him a confused look. He just shrugs a little, and mouths 'Later' to him, hoping that will appease him. He'll have to think of something to tell him later, too, because he knows that Tony isn't the kind of guy who's just going to let it go, either. He'll keep asking until he gets his answer.

Later comes sooner than he'd really been ready for. They're back in the cave and he'd just taken the injection and is jotting down the last bit of information in his journal from the day when Tony finally turns to him, his expression a little unreadable.

“So, what was up with Betty earlier?”

Bruce does drop his pen this time, glancing up at Tony. “Her father, the General? He hates me. Like... he really, really hates me. He wants her to stay away from me. Threatened me to stay away from her, too. Doesn't even want us to be friends. He's giving her a hard time about it.”

Raising a brow, Tony moves to sit on the edge of the cot. “Why does he hate you so much?”

“He just thinks...” All in, is what Bruce thinks, “I'm different than the other people here.”

“But he doesn't know about Big Green?”

“No, you're the only one that knows about Him. He thinks I'm different because he knew me before I came here. He met me once before.”

Tony's expression changes a little, and he looks confused. Bruce feels a little bit sick, but what more does he have to hide from Tony? He's already seen him turn into a rampaging monster, this can't be that much worse than that.

“When would you have met a General like that?”

“My father was a scientist like I am-- a better scientist, probably. Crazier, though. He-- He killed people. My mother. Some other people, too,” But Bruce still can't really think or talk about that, because he doesn't understand it. “It's really complicated, the whole story, but when they first came to question us about it, I was young and I didn't--” it's embarrassing and shameful to admit now, harder than he thought it was going to be for sure. “I protected him. I didn't give them the information that they needed to find him. Ross thinks that I'm going to become my father.”

Bruce can't look at Tony, so he doesn't know what to make of the silence that is hanging heavily in the air between them. He's not sure if telling his friend was a good idea or not. He'd thought that he didn't have anything to lose by telling that story-- it wasn't the same as just blurting out all of the feelings that he was hiding, but he's starting to think that it might have been just as bad.

The silence hangs between them a little bit longer before there's just no way that Bruce can take it any more. The anxiety is like a bubble that's gathered in the pit of his stomach, and he can't seem to pop it, so he looks over at Tony who is just looking at him thoughtfully. There's no judgement on his face, and the relief that rushes through Bruce at that realization is palpable.

“We're all worried that we're going to turn into our fathers,” Tony finally says, stepping a little closer to Bruce and shaking his head. “All of us, even me. You don't have to listen to him, you know. He's insane. Everyone around here thinks that about him. Everyone. Probably even Betty. She's not listening to him, anyways. She's your friend despite him. She even wanted to date you before, I'm sure that lit him on fire for a while. That's probably the real reason that he hated you. Just wait until you perfect this serum, he'll be eating his words when you're saving the world.”

Bruce lets out a breath that he had no idea that he'd been holding, because those were all the words that he'd been telling himself since he'd gotten to the camp and seen Ross for the first time, but it is so different to hear them coming from Tony instead of just from his own brain.

Still stepping forward, something changes in Tony's expression, and Bruce isn't sure what to make of it.

“Has the serum kicked in yet?”

Bruce blinks a little and nods. His fingers tingling a little, his sure sign that the serum has started working.

“Good. Let's stop thinking about that asshole, and think about science. You like science, I like science, it's a winning combination.”

It takes a second to figure out what Tony is talking about when he says that they should be thinking about science, but in about a minute there are hands at the edge of his shirt, tugging up and his shirt is sliding up and over his head.

The air is still extremely warm from the earlier day, and so it's not an unpleasant experience, and so Bruce reaches for Tony's shirt, pleased when the other boy lets him tug his shirt up and over his head, too. He even enjoys the way Tony's hair falls messy over his head after the tight collar of the shirt is pulled free.

It doesn't really matter where they toss their shirts, but Bruce is mostly looking forward to when he gets to reach forward, fingers sliding eagerly over Tony's pale chest, loving how dark and big his hands look in contrast to his friend's skin. Tony is responsive, too. Bruce doesn't have a whole lot of experience with this sort of thing, but he knows that he likes the way that Tony lets out sharp gasps and surprised sounds when his nails come up to scrape maybe a little more roughly than he'd intended against his nipples. His fingers moved a little more to slide lightly against the arc reactor, pleased at the shiver that it forces from Tony, too. Rough and gentle at the same time, he can do that.

Bruce makes a note of for next time, too. Next time.

Bruce wants to have his mouth on Tony again. He can still remember how good it felt to slide his lips against Tony's neck and to mark him and to see his mark on him, and it's _still there_ , and he could make it darker or bigger, make sure that nobody could forget that there was someone who had had Tony like this.

The voice at the back of his mind is getting louder again, telling him over and over again how good it is to have Tony how good Tony smelled, that he should mark him over and over again.

That voice sounded like it was full of great ideas, really.

“Calm down, big guy, we have time,” Tony's voice is breathy, and his fingers are in Bruce's hair even as he tugs him closer, guiding Bruce's lips to his throat. He wonders what kind of noise he must have made, or what he must have done in order to get that kind of reaction, but it is what he wants and he opens his mouth immediately.

Sucking lightly, he mouths at the mark that he'd left behind only a few nights earlier, darkening it just a little bit, wanting it to look fresh and new. The sounds that Tony makes at that go straight to his cock, and he has to shift a little, his hands coming up, one resting at the small of his friend's back, and the other at the back of Tony's neck, just so that he wouldn't be tempted to touch himself. They were nearly pressed back against the table now.

“Is that the best that you can do?”

Bruce lets out a soft, wet sound against Tony's neck and bites down against the smooth skin as he holds him tighter. They are pressed tightly together now, and when he bites, he can feel Tony's cock jerk a little against his thigh. Tony's words are just meant to egg him on, he can tell that much by such a physical reaction, and his own lips turned up into a smirk on their own at such an obvious feel of arousal-- it is good to know that he has power like this over his friend in this situation.

The other boy's hands are squeezing in between their bodies to unfasten their jeans, and Bruce means to help him, he really is going to, but one of his hands is really close to Tony's ass, and he is using the chance to reach down and squeeze it lightly. He likes the way it makes his friend groan, and all of those noises are more than enough to have him hard and breathing heavily against the curve of Tony's neck.

It is also enough to have the watch beeping twice.

“Ignore it,” he breathes. His heart isn't beating that hard.

Tony laughs little breathlessly, but doesn't disagree as his fingers wrapped around Bruce's cock, stroking him slowly and drawing a long moan from Bruce.

This was what he'd been obsessing about for the last three days.

“Hang on,” Tony said, pulling his hand free and shifting himself around a little.

Bruce isn't too excited about the prospect of Tony moving around a little, especially when he pulls all the way away, but he doesn't go far. He just backs up so that he is pressed against the table they use for all of the experiments. His jeans are around his ankles, his throat is marked thoroughly, and his cock is dark and hard and pressed up to his stomach, a little sticky at the tip every time that it bobs with Tony's breathing, and Bruce feels a sound pulled out of himself without his permission, and can't even find it in himself to be embarrassed for it.

“Come here, we'll do both of us at the same time. That way nobody is left hanging.”

He does feel a little bit of embarrassment at the reminder of their last time, but it's nothing too extreme, and Bruce steps forward immediately, doing everything he can not to trip over his own jeans which are bunched at his ankles.

The first feel of Tony's hand on his cock wrapped loose enough so that he can press both of them together, stroking them both slowly, is perfect. Bruce gasps loudly, and his head falls forward onto Tony's shoulder, his hips moving almost without his own permission. He doesn't want to let Tony do all of the work, of course, and so he lowers one of his own hands, wrapping it loosely there and pretty much just holding it there for support and a little friction, as the both of them rock their hips back and forth against each other.

It's even better than it had been the last time, and the Other Guy must know that, because Bruce is already pretty close, when the watch begins to beep a few times in a row. He lifts his head from Tony's shoulder, and is surprised to see brown eyes staring back at him.

He swallows hard, because it makes him feel hotter somehow to see Tony up close like this when he's already almost there. His eyes are big and brown and blown wide, and it's so hot that it just adds to the sensation of everything else that's going on around them.

“I'm, uh, I'm close,” he admits, breathily, his face and chest flushed a dark red in a mix of embarrassment and arousal, his hips moving a little faster.

“You're not alone,” comes the equally breathy response.

He's relieved for that, but the beeping is getting a little louder, even as his body tenses up, his eyes squeeze shut, and he can feel his orgasm ripping through him quick and hard and messy as it spills over his hand.

He can feel Tony against him, tightening and the hot and wet and messy, too, and he's glad that this time he got to feel it, too, because it sets and extra little spasm through him at the feel of it. One day he wants to see it. His body is over sensitive and it almost hurts with the way that Tony continues to rock against him, but he just keeps wanting more of it, more of Tony.

The watch is beeping louder, though, and he can feel the sensation that comes before the change, and it's battling with the serum for dominance, even as he opens his eyes and looks into Tony's. His heart is starting to beat faster now, too.

“It's going to happen, I can feel it.”

Tony just shakes his head.

“Calm down. You're in charge of it. You can do it, Bruce.”

It's Bruce's turn to shake his head, and he swallows hard.

“I don't want to change. I can't calm down enough after this.”

Tony huffs out a sound and wipes his hands on Bruce's chest (which, ew), before grabbing Bruce's face hard in his hands. “Calm down.”

And then he's kissing him on the mouth.

Every part of Bruce that had been obsessing over the change and the Other Guy and how far he was going to have to run naked through the woods is completely side tracked by the feeling of Tony's lips on his own.

They're chapped, just the way Bruce had figured that they would be. They had the feel of someone who probably spent a lot of time biting their lips when they were working (which Bruce had noticed Tony doing), and he kisses like he does everything else. Like he knows exactly what he is doing, and he can prove that he is better at it than everyone else.

There is no doubt in Bruce's mind that this is the best kiss that he's ever had (though he's just got the one other one to compare it to), even if it is messy and naked and in a dirty cave and completely out of necessity and probably nothing else.

It is still what he's been wanting for almost as long as he's known Tony here.

He responds to the kiss, of course he does, his lips moving easily against Tony's, tongue sliding lightly against his lips and then against his friend's tongue as he feels Tony's hands move from his face to his hair as he deepens the kiss.

It feels like they've been kissing for a long time, but when they break apart, breathing heavily, Bruce wonders if it was just until the watch had stopped beating.

“Wow, I can't believe that worked.”

Bruce just stares at him, his face still flushed.

“I can't believe that was your master plan. I could have killed you!”

Tony shakes his head and shrugs, glancing around for a rag, and wiping off his chest before offering it to Bruce, who takes it after a moment.

“I knew you wouldn't. I figured if you were distracted enough, you probably wouldn't change. You weren't that far into the change, your eyes weren't even green yet. I figured I was safe.”

Wiping himself off, Bruce pulls up his pants and tries to ignore how they are suddenly still very uncomfortable.

“You're insane. I could have been way further into it than that.”

“I've seen you change a lot of times, big guy, I've noticed a lot more about these things than you think. I'm a scientist, too, you know.”

Bruce feels a little bad about that, and nods with a sigh. “I guess you were right, it worked. Are you planning to do that every time, then?”

Tony just laughs and shakes his head. “I'm sure that wouldn't look kinky when this whole thing goes public.”

A garbled sound escapes Bruce and he shakes his head. He glances over at his journals and wonders how he’s going to reconcile with himself leaving so much of the very important pieces of the experimentation out of his documentation. But it’s not really like including ‘gay sexual exploration’ is something that Tony is going to want attached to his name, either. He’s just going to have to be as vague as possible.

“You look happier today,” is the first thing that he hears from Betty when she sees him at breakfast. “Is there something that you're not telling me?”

Her gaze is lingering meaningfully on Tony who is itching in a way that Bruce thinks has to be subconsciously at the mark that Bruce had made much more obvious the night before. He should probably feel some kind of guilt over that, but he just doesn't have it in him.

“What? No, of course not.”

He can't tell her. He can't tell anyone. That's part of this experiment, and besides-- he's not sure that Tony would want people to hear those kinds of things about him going around the camp. Not that he thought that Betty was the kind of girl who would spread rumours about him or anything, but he just knew that information that was important was always the information that managed to get spread around the easiest.

“He's not exactly being subtle about that mark on his neck though, is he? And you're not being subtle about the fact that you can't stop staring at him pretty much every second of the day that isn't directly devoted to scientific discovery. I'm starting to think that you forgot about the part of this camp where it's full of at least some people who aren't complete blind idiots.”

She doesn't sounds angry, but her words still make Bruce's face flush a little, and he turns his gaze away from Tony to look at her carefully again. She really is something. He almost wishes-- but things are what they are, and Betty is great, but he doesn't know how much he can trust her yet. Her father is still something of a psychopath, and he doesn't want to do anything that would incite his rage.

“Sorry, Betty. There's not really anything to tell that you don't already know. I mean-- I think you might know more than he does about the whole me watching him part. He's not that perceptive to that kind of thing. It's pretty much a one-sided thing. I'm working on being a better stealth mode and everything, it's just a little harder than it sounded at first, you know?”

Betty just gives him a look, but reaches out to take his hand and squeeze it lightly. “I do know.”

He feels weirdly comforted by her touch and it's easier to offer her a smile despite the little bit of guilt that still lingers there. He's pretty sure she's talking about him a little, and also he's lying to her at least by omission. He's telling the truth about his feelings for Tony, but leaving out the Other Guy is a pretty big omission.

“What's going on over here?”

Tony's voice snaps him out of his reverie, and he turns his head immediately to his friend, smile still on his face. Tony still has that strange look on his face, and he's looking down to where he and Betty are holding hands, and so Bruce carefully pulls his away. He can still remember what Tony had said about leading her on.

Glancing behind Tony, Bruce could see Pepper leaning over his shoulder, a strange smile on her face, too. It seemed like it was going to be something of a weird morning for everyone.

“Did you guys see the hickey Tony's got this morning? He won't tell me anything about the girl he got it from. Just said that it was some older chick from camp and that they were keeping it private. But it doesn't really _look_ that private.”

Bruce has a sinking feeling that just seems to be getting a little worse the more that he looks at Pepper's face, because she doesn't have the expression of someone who is all right with her friend with benefits partner hooking up with someone twice in a row.

He knows how she feels, too. That sick, twisted feeling that she is probably feeling right now, and he kind of wants to reach out to her. But it's him. He's the one that's making her feel this way, and it's both of them that wants to keep tucked close to the bits of Tony that they've been given, and he doesn't want to give that away, not even to make Pepper's expression change to something that looks less hurt.

Not for anything at this point.

Betty would probably be ashamed of him right now. He probably should be, too.

That's why it has to be a secret. Because the part of him that he's pretty sure is the Other Guy is secretly pleased that Tony is lying for him, is telling that it's private between them, that he's protecting this thing between them, even if it's not truly a thing yet.

“It's pretty big,” Betty agrees after a long moment, even though she's still looking at Bruce thoughtfully.

Bruce thinks that he can feel all of their gazes on him. Tony's most of all.

“Uh, yeah, it's huge. Very impressive.”

Tony snorts a little at him at that, and he bites down on his tongue a little to refrain from making any other stupid comments.

“Come on, can we talk about something else? It's just a hickey, it's not like we haven't all seen them before, we're practically adults now.”

Pepper just gives Tony an expression that makes it pretty clear that she's not interested in talking about much else, her brows furrowed, and Bruce does feel honestly sorry for her in that moment. He's wanted to have Tony this whole time, but he hadn't been thinking about the fact that he'd have to take him away from Pepper to do it.

The good feeling that he'd woken up with that morning is practically gone, and he stands up to excuse himself. He has mandatory activities in a half hour, anyways, it would give him a chance to clear his head and make sure that there weren't any lingering anxieties just floating around waiting to instigate a change at any point during the day.

“I'll come with you.”

Betty and Tony stare at each other, having spoken nearly in unison. Not what he would have expected-- two days ago, he could have left the table in the middle of a meal and nobody would have even noticed, much less offered to go with him, and now he can't even get away from any of them.

“Uh, I'll be all right, really. It's not that far to walk.”

“We have first activity together,” Tony is already standing up and grabbing for Bruce's empty tray. “So I'll come with you.”

It is hard to argue with that without sounding like he is trying to avoid Tony, and so he offers Betty a small smile and waves a little at Pepper who is just staring down at the table.

The silence is nice while it lasts between them, but Bruce knows that it isn't going to last too long once he and Tony make their way back towards the barracks where they are supposed to be spending most of their time between activities.

“You were kind of weird back there,” he said with a glance over to Bruce. “We have to play it cooler than that or they'll be able to figure out that something is going on between us.”

Bruce wants to ask if that would really be so bad, and he wanted to tell Tony that Betty was already more than halfway there, but he didn't want to come off as being the weird clingy girlfriend again, it wasn't going to help his cause any and definitely not with someone with the kind of reputation that Tony had.

“I just didn't expect to be a private older woman,” he finally manages, offering Tony a small shrug. “I forgot about it, I didn't think that we were going to be talking about it at all.”

An incredulous look crosses Tony's face at that. “Dude, if you don't want to do too much talking about it, you shouldn't maul me like this. It makes it hard not to talk about.”

Flushing a little at that, he just nods and glances away. “You're right, I just didn't think much about it. I didn't realize that Pepper's feelings were going to be hurt so bad. You didn't tell me that you guys were so serious.”

“We're not really that serious. We've been more on-again-off-again for the last few years. I guess she's just never really had to think about me with anyone else before. We've both been with other people before-- she's just never seen it before. I should have talked to her about it before, I guess, but I think she'll get over it. She's Pepper Potts, you know?”

Bruce didn't know. She was the one in their group that he knew the least, but he knew that she was hurting a lot more than Tony realized, or at least more than he seemed to want to know about.

“What are you going to do now?”

Tony shrugs a little. “Tell her that I have to be more serious about my robots, I guess. My robots and this older girl for now. I'm sure she'll understand. We've been talking about putting things on hold until college time anyways, see if I'll be ready for the kind of commitment that she deserves then. This is a good time for that.”

It's a little like a punch to the chest, thinking about Tony promising a commitment to someone else when Bruce is standing right there, willing to offer him whatever he wants-- but they've only know each other for a few weeks. Why does it feel like it's been forever, then?

“Sounds like you've got it all planned out, then.” He's a little impressed by it, a little pleased, too, because it means that they'll have more time to pay attention to their own experiments without having to worry that they're hurting anyone.

“What about you?”

Bruce frowns a little, and turns towards Tony. “What about me? I don't have any loose ends.”

“Betty Ross doesn't count as a loose end?”

Bruce sighs a little. This again.

“She's not-- she's just a friend. She was just, uh, teasing me this morning. About your hickey.”

Tony's brows made for his forehead at that. “What do you mean?”

Right. Tony didn't know that Betty knew Bruce was gay. Tony doesn't know Bruce is gay.

“Just about the size of it. That I must be, uh, jealous that nobody had ever left one like that on me. Betty knows that I'm not looking for something here. I told her that I'm too focused on science. I don't have time for anything else aside from that. She just wants to be my friend.”

Tony looks a little sceptical, but nods slowly. “So we're both going to have everything worked out.”

“Yeah,” Bruce agrees, smiling a little.

“And we can get that hickey thing worked out, too, if you're really all that jealous about it. If you think your heart can take it.”

His heart does give a little skip at that, and his hands squeeze into fists as he forces himself to stay calm. It has been a while since his last sedation serum, and he wants to make sure that he doesn't become too reliant on them, especially during the day.

“That-- yeah, maybe.”

Tony just offers him a bright smile. “All right, well, let's get through this day and then see what happens!”

With the promise of something like that lingering over his head, it was like the day couldn't go by any slower. Especially since he'd been forced to spend the first half of the day with Tony who had offered unhelpful little comments whenever they were out of earshot of any other campers.

His mind had been full of the thought of exactly what it would be like to be marked by the other boy, what it would be like to be able to be with him completely guilt free, and totally just the two of them. Even if it was under the pretence of science, Tony had said he was willing to practice monogamy for the sake of it with Bruce for as long as they were testing the serum, and that meant something to him.

That meant that for now, Tony was just his, and it made a whole world of difference.

Bruce hadn't seen Tony since lunchtime, though, and that seemed like an awful long time by the time that dinner rolled around and there was still no sign of him. No sign of Pepper, either.

He assumed that Tony was having the talk with her about having to spend time apart because of the whole robot thing and because of wanting to wait until he felt ready to make a commitment. Bruce would just have to wait for him in the cave to find out how it went.

Except that he wouldn't have to wait that long.

Halfway there, he is pushing his way through the bushes when he comes across where Tony has Pepper pressed tightly against one of the taller, thicker trees.. Peppers skirt is pushed up around her waist and Tony is-- Tony's hand is moving inside of her and they are definitely not having any conversations about anything with the way that her lips are pressed tightly against his, her hands all over his body the way Bruce had been touching him not even twenty-four hours ago.

This isn't a private place, they aren't going for privacy-- or at least they hadn't been thinking about it when they'd stumbled against each other. They had to have wanted to be found. Maybe even by Bruce. Tony have to have known that he would come this way.

There is nothing that Bruce can do about the way his watch beeps loudly in the moderate quiet of the wooded area, even as he turns away. He can hear the curses from Tony and the protests from Pepper, but it doesn't matter, because Bruce is already doing the thing that he does best-- he is running as fast as he can in the opposite direction. He has to get away from them, the watch is beeping a little louder the further he goes, but it doesn't seem like far enough.

His chest aches and it hurts to think about any of what he's just seen, because that had been the opposite of what he'd been expecting.

No, not the opposite of what he'd been expecting, but the opposite of what he'd been hoping for.

Somehow that hadn't been all the different from what he'd been expecting.

It takes him twice as long to get to the cave from that direction, but when he does, he's breathing heavily, and the beeping is down to an occasional reminder of the fact that he's still a slave to that voice at the back of his mind that is currently roaring with fury.

Everything is a mess and he can't think of a logical way to put any of it together. He mostly just wants to sleep it off and deal with it in the morning.

Of course, in this place, things can't ever go the way that he wants them to, and Tony comes walking into the cave before he can even get himself into a position for sleeping.

The watch beeps a little faster.

“Stay away from me.”

Tony puts his hands up, looking guilty.

“I've been looking for you. Actually all of us have been. Me, Pepper, Betty-- all of us have been looking for you.”

“You shouldn't get them involved in this, I could change at any time and I don't know what could happen to them if they get too close when it happens and I'm like-- like this.”

Tony takes a step forward. “You just need to calm down a little bit. There's no reason for you to be this worked up.”

Bruce steps back away from him and lets out a breath that sounds like a huff. “No reason? Really? The porno that I walked in on was all the reason that I needed, I think.”

He can't even think straight, it's getting harder to be able to tell the difference between thoughts that belong to him and thoughts that belong to the Other Guy. He feels completely out of control, like he can’t grab hold of a single one of the thoughts crammed into his brain at that moment, they all just slip through his grasp.

“That was nothing-- I was just telling her that we needed to take a break. Just like we talked about.”

“With your dick? You let all the girls down with the power of your dick?”

Tony gives him a funny look, and the watch keeps beeping. His vision is getting a little blurry, and he's not sure that he's going to be able to stop a transformation from happening tonight. He'd gone so long without one, and now it was ruined. It just didn’t matter, not when that hot uncomfortable tight sensation was rushing through him.

“Why do you care how I do it? I told you that I would do it, and I was doing it. We're not married, I wasn't cheating on you, what's the big deal?”

Bruce lets out another one of the heavy breaths, throwing his hands in the air. They're tinted green, and he can see where the muscles are becoming more defined.

“You really can't see where the big deal is? Why I care so much? I was starting to think that you were ignoring it on purpose, but you're really just--- You really can't tell that this is about the fact that I'm-- that I-- it's not just sex for me?”

Tony just stares at him blankly, but at least he's stopped moving forward. Bruce can feel the way his muscles are tearing and pulling and his bones and breaking and healing and twisting to shape the way the Other Guy needs.

“You really had no idea-- I thought you were just treating me like one of your girls, keeping me at arms length to get the sex and avoiding the feelings on purpose, but I guess you just didn't know.”

A growl escapes him and he moves to push past Tony. He can’t make any of the words stop, and he knows that when this is over-- after the transformation wears off and he’s back to being Bruce Banner again, he’s going to regret all of this. He’d never wanted Tony to find out, and not like this. Never like this, never with him sounding like a crazy person, in the middle of a transformation into a giant green monster. Never with his throat feeling so dry and tight and his voice sounding so unlike his own.

The words barely even sound like they’re coming from him anymore.

“I'm sorry you had to know now, even.”

And then the change is over him before he can do more than run as fast as he can away from the cave and away from Tony, everything else a blur of black and white and pain.

This time when he wakes up, Bruce doesn't experience any of the feelings that he'd had in any of his past changes. He's covered in twigs and dirt and--- and something sticky and warm and wet, and when he opens his eyes it's barely sunrise. A glance down at his body tells him that he's covered in blood. A lot of it.

It's pretty clear to him as soon as he starts moving around, that the blood can't be his because he's not got any injuries on his body. As soon as he sits up, though, he feels the cool touch of skin behind him and turns around slowly, dread filling the pit of his stomach.

It's a body. Barely breathing and covered in blood. A girl, her hair is matted around her face and her eyes are barely open. Her arms and legs look like they're broken and she looks pretty severely beaten. The dress (and it looks so familiar, he's seen that flower pattern so many times), is torn around her shoulders, barely held up. It's pretty obvious that the Other Guy had done this to her. That Bruce had done it. She opens her mouth to speak, and he lifts a hand to brush some of the dirt from her cheek.

“B-Bruce...”

Betty.

“Betty. Betty? Betty! Oh my God, Betty, hold on, just hold on!” He doesn't even know if his voice is audible, it cracks as soon as he opens his mouth. He hopes she can hear him, hopes she knows not to give up yet.

How had he-- But why would the Other Guy have attacked Betty.

He can't remember. He doesn't want to remember. She'd been out looking for him last night, and all he'd been thinking about was getting away from the cave in time to make sure that he didn't attack Tony. He'd forgot about the girls looking for him.

Everything then moves in slow motion. He's reaching out for her again when he hears the harsh footprints and then sees a dozen soldiers surrounding him, guns all points at him. General Ross is at the front of the pack, his eyes moving from Betty to Bruce, and he knows exactly what kind of connection the older man must be making.

The right one.

Bruce doesn't fight them when he's hoisted up to his feet and handcuffed. He doesn't fight them when he's marched back to the camp base, either. He's brought around the tall fences and over to where he'd never been before. He doesn't fight when they lock him in a tall, cylindrical glass cell that seems more like an interrogation room than anything.

He doesn't plan to fight them on anything, because he's already a criminal. Just like his father.

He wants to ask them about Betty, wants to know if she's all right, wants to know if she lived or if she died, but knows that they won't tell him.

He doesn't actually want to to know if she died.

Bruce wants to know if he's become the murderer that his captor had always known that he was going to become.

He doesn't even know if he's officially under arrest or anything, either. He hadn't been read his rights or anything like that (not that he expected to have any rights after the crime that he'd committed), and he hadn't actually seen any police officers the whole time he'd been detained.

Actually, he hadn't seen any more of those army officials, either, since they'd brought him into the prison and that had been two days ago. The only face he'd seen had been General Ross's face, and he'd only seen it twice. Twice more than he'd ever wanted to, but it was definitely strange that there was nobody else there.

Even the General hadn't said anything to him yet. He'd only showed up to shove a bottle of water and a couple of pieces of stale bread into the cell once a day, and then leave again. Each time, though, his expression had been tighter and he'd seemed even angrier. He'd seen those eyes cold and angry and full of hatred directed towards him before, but it was nothing like what he'd been experiencing the last two days.

Bruce supposes that he should try to quell some of his own initial dislike for the man-- after all, he was responsible for a possible lethal attack on his daughter. Situations reversed, he was pretty sure that he'd be just as angry.

Betty who he'd gotten involved in this whole mess completely by accident. She was a total innocent in everything, and she'd gotten hurt because he hadn't been able to control himself just over some stupid fight that he'd had with Tony. Because he hadn't had the foresight to make sure that the serum he'd created to counteract the original serum was actually a success..

She was somewhere possibly fighting for her life because he was still a teenager with way too many hormones that he couldn't control, and who just wasn't a good enough scientist yet.

But Betty couldn't be dead. That was something that was becoming clearer and clearer to him the longer that he spent in the cell just staring at his dirty, scratched up reflection.

If Betty were dead, then it was pretty clear that the General would have killed Bruce, too. There's no way a man like that would let someone who'd murdered his daughter live.

Why was Bruce still alive in this situation as it was? He didn't seem like the type of person who would let anyone live who had hurt any member of his family even this much.

In fact, Bruce was starting to wonder what Ross was planning to do with him in this place. Torture? Was he maybe just waiting to see what happened with Betty before he killed him? That would explain why he was keeping everyone else away from the prison, then. If he didn't want them to know that he had one of the campers locked up and ready to be snuffed out.

He wasn't sure that he had it in himself to fight it, even if that were the case. Though he couldn't say that going out at Ross's hand was his ideal way, it seemed almost like poetic justice.

If Betty died, then wouldn't he deserve it?

“I'm so sorry Betty.” Are the only words that he spoke into the uncomfortable darkness of his cell on the third night. He wished that he could have said them to her, but that was becoming little more than a dream at this point.

It was another two days of avoiding eating the stale bread, and only drinking the smallest amount of water that his body required from him, before Ross stands before his cell empty handed and staring at him. Blue eyes just stare at him, though a little of the tightness is missing from the glare.

A bit of hope sparks in the pit of Bruce's stomach and he tries not to let it show on his face. Something tells him that Ross isn't interested in anything that makes him feel good.

“You're lucky,” comes the eventual drawl as the older man steps closer to the glass. Bruce has to resist the urge to move further away from it. He feels that sensation like crawling under his skin, but stands his ground as best he can.

He feels weak the way he always does after a transformation, but he just can't shake it. He guesses it has to do with the lack of food and water, and the fact that he's been stressing his body with the thought of what he's done to Betty.

“Really? Locked in here, it's pretty hard to believe.”

That makes the General's brows draw together as he presses up almost directly against the glass.

“If you'd killed my daughter, I'm sure you're smart enough to know what would have happened to you.”

Bruce's heart does a funny little somersault in his chest and he can't help the way he steps forward a little bit.

“Betty-- is she all right, then?” His voice comes out in a breathy rush, all hope of acting nonchalant gone.

“I wouldn't say she's all right,” Ross sneered coldly, shaking his head. “Her arms and legs are broken, she had a collapsed lung, and it'll be weeks before the swelling and bruising in her face goes down enough to make her recognizable. It looks like she's been hit by a car. How hard did you feel you needed to beat my daughter, Banner?”

Bruce shakes his head, though nausea is rolling in his stomach. He hadn't eaten anything in four days, but any of the small amount of water he'd had to drink feels ready to come out. That bad. She'd been beaten that badly. Had the Other Guy really been so angry that He'd been willing to take out his anger that way?

“I didn't-- I wouldn't ever--”

Ross holds up a hand, shaking his head.

“You're right, for some reason she's insisting that you aren't the one that beat her. She says she was beaten by the monster. A Sasquatch, she said. A terrible, green monster. She was barely conscious, could have been hallucinating for all we know, but she was very insistent. The monster attacked her.”

Bruce feels himself pale a little, and steps away from the glass. He's not sure if this is going to work in his favour or against him- he can just insist that he has no clue what she's talking about. That seems like the most logical decision.

“But we found her with you, and you were the one covered in her blood, Banner. Naked, too, which is strange, don't you think?”

Bruce swallows hard and shrugs a little, not trusting himself to speak.

It's not the first time he wishes that he'd chosen something different to experiment with, but it's the first time he's wished it with such gusto.

“Here's what I think, Banner. You should listen close to me, because I'm sure you'll find this is a fascinating story.”

Bruce does lift his gaze a little, brown eyes meeting Ross's.

“I think you've created something here. Some kind of pet monster. Something that's strong enough to break a man-- or my daughter-- at your whim. I think you built it here, while you were supposed to be building something for the military contest, and I think you've been using it to scare your fellow campers because that's how you like to get your little kick of power. Am I right?”

Bruce narrows his eyes a little and shakes his head. He's not even lying. Ross is close, but he's still wrong.

“I doubt you'll tell me the truth, regardless, but it would be the best for everyone involved if you did. You were supposed to build something for the military, and that monster-- that belongs to the military, doesn't it? You're not looking to commit attempted murder and also betray your country in the same week, are you? Just tell me where it is.”

Bruce moves to sit back down on the ground of the cell, ignoring the way that it's cool against his naked ass. “You're crazy. I didn't create a pet, and even if I had I wouldn't tell you anything about it.”

He can tell it's the wrong thing to say when Ross just smacks his hand hard against the glass wall of the cell.

“You'll tell me, Banner, you won't have any choice. You're smart enough, smarter than you're being right now. I'm sure that you'll decide that you want me to know. I'd just prefer you tell me before it starts attacking any of your other camp mates. Unless you really don't care about that sort of thing.”

He chooses not to say anything to that, turning away from the other man instead. He got his information about Betty- she's alive and she's going to be okay. That's all that matters. He's low-risk for another transformation while he's locked inside of this place, and Tony isn't around.

It's pretty obvious that Tony is his main source of... everything. Everything good and everything bad, too.

A few minutes later he can finally hear Ross walking away down the corridor and he's left alone again. Good. He'd rather be alone than stuck with the one person in the world that would rather see him dead than alive.

It takes another three days before he starts to lose hope that he's ever going to get out of the prison. He's been naked and dirty in the place for a week at that point, and every day is the same. It's dark until it's light, and Ross will come to him once a day with a bottle of water and two pieces of stale, white bread that he doesn't eat any of until the fifth day when he can't handle the way that his stomach aches with the need to have something in it.

With the food and water comes question after question about his supposed pet lurking in the woods. Ross tells him how they've been combing the area that they found him in, and Bruce just hopes that they won't find the cave with Tony in it. He's not sure if he's forgiven Tony for what happened between them, and for getting Betty involved (though he guesses that logically it wasn't his friend's fault, he just wishes that he'd known better), but he doesn't want Tony found with any of the information that Bruce had put together. They'd know right away that he was involved, and that would probably just land him in the same situation that Bruce was in right now.

Each day, though, it seems like they are unsuccessful, and Bruce continues to keep his information to himself. He isn't really in the sharing mood.

At one point when he'd been creating the serum he'd hoped that it would work to help the military get stronger, to save lives and help his country be the best one there was. When it had gone wrong, he'd just wanted to keep finding a way to make it successful so that he could keep that dream alive-- but now that he had a bit of the military in front of him, Ross talking about how they wanted to harness the monster and make it a part of the military... that was not what he'd wanted. That was never what he'd wanted. An army of monsters? No, he'd just wanted to help them get stronger. He'd wanted to save some lives so that there wouldn't be so many grieving families back home waiting for men and women to come back who just... wouldn't. This was never what he'd wanted.

It had been a naïve dream, obviously. He'd never seen how true that was until now. He'd always just assumed that he'd work for the military, helping it constantly get better and stronger-- he was a little afraid of what was happening to him right now. Why they would just want the power of a monster that they thought was completely out of control. A monster that they thought would attack people-- children-- without provocation.

He was never going to give up the information, no matter what kind of deal Ross offered him.

Once he'd come to understand that this was probably going to be his life, living in this cell, it didn't seem to matter any more. He was content to some extent with just laying there until Ross arrived, and then just sitting up to take the water and bread, listen to him ramble on about how much they needed the monster, and then lay back down and watch the shadows on the wall until the sun went the rest of the way down and the light disappeared from where he got to see it through the small window in the cell across the way.

It is a little like a weight is lifted off his shoulders. He's accepted that this is life. No more monster, no more anything.

It didn't stop him from thinking about Betty's smile when she'd pushed him into the lake for the first time, or of the way sunshine felt on his skin during a long hike, or Tony's grin after the first time he'd kissed him.

Or just Tony.

Tony's surprised face when he'd told him that he had feelings for him.

He'd always kind of thought that Tony had known about his feelings and had just shrugged them off the way he did with the girls that he'd fooled around with. He'd never expected him to be quite so surprised about the whole thing. It made him wish that he'd either been able to tell him a better way, or not at all. Definitely not while he'd been furiously in the middle of a change.

Two weeks after he'd been locked in the cell had given him a long time to think. A long time to do nothing but think and work equations in his mind. He thought that it was a bit of a shame that he was locked in the cage like this, because he might have come up with a better version of the sedation serum. A better, longer acting version.

He just didn't have any way to test it out. Or any need for it in this place. It's not like he could just ask Ross for the supplies or anything.

The visit from Ross on that day was just as frustrating as every other day. He claimed that they were getting closer to finding his pet-- a lie, Bruce knew-- and it was in his best interest to just tell them where it was.

He just rolled over and waited for the man to leave.

Ross was getting more desperate, he could hear it in his voice. Who knew what he was going to resort to next.

But this time it happens a little quicker than he'd thought. Only ten or fifteen minutes after Ross's footsteps disappear, Bruce can hear more coming back towards him again. That can't mean anything good, and he swallows hard, curling in on himself a little more.

He is ready for this. He's been ready for this since the first day that he's been locked in this cell. Killing him is really the worst that they can do to him, right?

“Bruce!”

Blinking in the almost-darkness, Bruce is slow to turn around. That is not a voice that he's expecting to hear at all. That voice--

“Tony?”

“What the Hell are you doing in there? You've been missing for two weeks. The whole camp has been looking for you!”

Bruce frowns and moves a little closer to the glass to get a better look at Tony. His chest tightens a little at the sight of him because he looks like he hasn't slept even a little since the last time that Bruce had seen him.

The light from his arc reactor lights up the space between them just a little bit, and it's better than the sunshine he'd been able to see in the moments that he'd been able to steal the sight of sun from that window. A hundred times better, because this is something that is all Tony.

“I'm having a private vacation,” he replies sarcastically, though his voice cracks a little, ruining the effect. “I got arrested after...” he can't even bring himself to say it.

“Betty. We all heard that she got attacked by a wild animal, and then that you were missing, presumed dead. I knew it had to be the Big Guy-- Bruce I'm sorry, I shouldn't have--”

“Don't,” he says quickly, glancing away and resisting the urge to reach out and grab for Tony. The glass of the cell will just get in the way anyways. “It wasn't-- I was mad before about you telling the girls to look for me, but it all started for a different reason, and it's not a good idea to get into a conversation about it when I'm stuck in here.”

Tony nods a little, though he still has a bit of a guilty expression on his face. “If you're sure-- I think the Big Guy could help break you out of there, though.”

“Yeah, I'm sure that would be really stealthy. They're looking for Him, you know. They think He'll be a great weapon. I have to keep Him hidden. I have to get out of here and away from this camp.”

“Bruce-- I think they told everyone that you're dead. Your aunt, too.”

Bruce can feel the colour drain from his face, even as he nods. “That's... that's good, actually. I need to stay away from her. I need to stay away from everyone that I know. I think I might have come up with a better equation for the sedation serum, too, I want to test it before I go-- I don't know. Maybe to South America or Africa or somewhere that they won't look for me. I have to get out of here, though. Quietly.”

Tony is looking at him with a strange expression on his face, and he nods. “I can get you out. Not until tomorrow, though, but I'll get you out. They haven't found the cave yet, so you can probably test out whatever you need to, there. But Bruce-- You're not going through this alone. You're still my friend.”

Bruce feels a weird warmth that settles in his stomach, and he makes a small sound of assent, because he doesn't want to do this alone. He's going to be alone for a long time, he should take whatever comfort he can in Tony's company while he it's there.

He's lucky to have a friend like Tony, and he's lucky that not everything was ruined by his confession.

“We'll talk then, too. And-- I'll bring you some clothes. Did Ross strip you naked?”

Tony sounds a little mad at that.

“I think I came this way. After my transformation. But I'd love some, uh, clothes.”

Tony narrows his eyes a little. “I'm tired of the military. I think I'm starting to rethink some of my career choices.”

Bruce shakes his head a little with a small smile. “Tomorrow, then. You should go, just to be on the safe side.”

Looking a little reluctant, Tony lifts his hand to the glass and presses it there lightly, before turning away. “I won't let you down, Bruce, I'll be back tomorrow, and I'll get you out.”

“I'll be counting on it.”

Tony's visit is enough to make the next day more bearable than the fourteen before it. He tries to follow the same routine, though, he thinks that Ross would notice if he looked like he had even an ounce of hope left in him, and it would probably infuriate the man.

“You're going to have to open up to me soon, Banner. I'm not the only one with an interest in this, I'm just the nicest one.”

Bruce seriously doubts that.

“I still don't know what you're talking about. You can't bully me into telling you about something that I don't know about.”

“You're not a very good liar, you know. There are other ways that I could go about getting this information, and we're going to have to switch over to those pretty soon if you don't start cooperating.”

Bruce just turns away from him and wills him to go away.

He waits a little longer than usual this time before he finally hears the footsteps heading away from him, but it's still a relief.

It's about an hour before anything happens. He hadn't doubted Tony, but he'd been a little on edge while waiting for his friend to come. Instead of hearing his footsteps, though, he hears a strange whirring sound, and then all of the lights go out in the cell block, the door for his cell opening on its own.

There's not even a moment where he thinks that it might be a trick-- he has absolutely nothing to lose at this point even if it is, Bruce just scrambles to his feet and gets out of the cell as quickly as possible. Tony is standing just down the hall from him with a small armful of clothes and a lopsided grin.

Bruce has never been so happy to see him in his life. He stumbles forward on unsteady feet, a small answering grin on his face.

“Get dressed fast, we need to get out of here quickly before they realize the power's been cut. It was really easy to get into this place, almost too easy, so I don't think we have that much time before they figure it out. It's probably only because he was hiding you from the rest of the camp...”

Bruce just nods a little dumbly. He still can't believe this is happening, not really. He'd forced himself to believe that this prison was going to be home almost a week ago, and now... now Tony was grabbing him by the wrist and his touch was so warm and comfortable and welcome and good and it was someone touching him and it had been two weeks since anyone had done that even by accident.

It feels great.

They have to take the long way around, but it still doesn't feel like it takes too long to get to the cave. There are a few close calls where Tony has to pull him behind trees or bushes to hide from where the soldiers are combing through the grounds for what Bruce assumes is the Other Guy, but they are otherwise safe. Bruce is just relieved to be free again.

“I can't believe I'm out. Thank you, Tony. Thank you.”

He is so grateful, he could have kissed Tony. He doesn't know that that would be welcome, though, so he keeps his hands to himself.

Tony is looking a little shifty himself, though, like he wants to say something, but is holding back. Bruce isn't sure that is good for him or not.

“Do we have what you need to make the new serum?” Is what Tony eventually says.

“Yeah, I should, uh, have everything.”

The easiness that they've had in the cell block seems to have disappeared as soon as they've stepped into the cave, and Bruce isn't sure why. Though he is suspicious of the fact that it might be because they've been intimate with each other a few times here. That is usually a good bet.

“It should only take a half hour to make and then I can take it-- I think it'll last longer and be a bit stronger. I had a lot of time to think.”

He moves over to his work station and begins pulling out what he's been using to work on his other serum. It isn't a huge deviation, just a bit of a twist on the original. He hopes that it will work the way that it seems to add up in his mind.

“I thought you were dead.”

Bruce almost drops the beaker in his hand as he glances up at Tony, stirring it slowly. “I wouldn't have died,” he insists.

“They were telling everyone, and then I noticed that Ross was disappearing a lot at the same time every day. I got suspicious, you know after you told me everything before, I couldn't help but wonder...”

Grinning a little, Bruce nods. “Thanks for not just believing that I was dead.”

“Thanks for not being dead,” Tony retorts.

After that, Bruce works in silence until the serum turns just the right shade of blue. He is so sure that this is going to work, more sure than he's been about any of the serums to date, and that is important-- he can't afford another failure. It is frustrating enough, sitting there and waiting and waiting, not able to have a real conversation and just waiting for some stupid serum that he’s made to start working before he can have a real conversation with someone. It is a precaution that is embarrassing and frustrating and that he’s completely created for himself.

“Okay, let's try this,” he says. His hand is shaking a little as he moves to grab a syringe from the box. Letting out a small breath, he prepares his skin and then slowly injects himself.

Unlike the last serum, this one works nearly instantaneously. He can feel the warm comfortable sensation rushing through his veins, and he turns to Tony with a small smile.

“I think it's working.”

Tony looks relieved, too, nodding a little, and putting the robotic glove he'd been tinkering with down.

“Good. Should I be apologizing, now? For sending the girls after you?”

Bruce feels his chest tighten a little at the memory, but draws in a deep breath to calm himself. He is going to make this one work.

“Yes-- I mean no, I mean-- the argument was my fault. You have every right to sleep with who you want to sleep with. I, uh, I don't know what came over me.”

“You didn't tell me that you had feelings for me that whole time. I really didn't have any clue. I wasn't just treating you like any girl that I sleep with,” Tony insists.

Bruce nods a little, glancing away. His face is red, and he hates how obvious his embarrassment is. He wishes he hadn't said that. “I know. I didn't mean to say that.”

“Yes, you did. You're right, that's how I treat girls. I sleep with them and that's how I keep them from talking about their feelings. Even Pepper. That night-- I was telling her that I needed a break and she was trying to change my mind. I guess I just thought it would be easier to go along with it than to tell her no.”

Bruce nods a little, licking his lips, still not looking at Tony. “I understand. Pepper is... someone that you've been with for a long time. It wasn't fair to ask you to sever a relationship like that.”

“That's not it at all,” Tony is saying and he sounds a little frustrated. “Pepper is like... Pepper is like my best friend, and I thought that one day she would be the person that I need in my life or it wouldn't make any sense. I thought it would just eventually happen. It didn't happen yet. I care about her a lot, but it just hasn't happened.”

Bruce glances back at Tony. He doesn't think that it happens like that, but he doesn't think it's his place to tell him that.

“I was confused.”

That gets Bruce's attention and he frowns a little. “Confused?”

“You confuse me. I thought we were just buddies helping each other out, and the whole thing with experimenting to make sure that the serum works.”

His flush gets darker and Bruce reaches up to itch a little at the injection site. That's a side effect he can deal with.

“I'm sorry, I didn't mean for it to be more than that. I thought it was just going to be that.”

“With all of those girls it was about being wanted, and then with you, it was definitely about being wanted. I didn't know what it was like to be needed, though, or I didn't think I did. I didn't realize that I wanted it to be about that, either. I wanted you to need me. More than anyone else, either, even if that sounds unhealthy-- I just wanted it. You want what you want, you know? Even if you don't know it at the time.”

Bruce licks his lips again, his heart is trying to beat a little harder.

“I definitely didn't know what it was like to spend two weeks just thinking about how much I wanted someone. Or how much I needed them back. I'm really confused right now. I'm not used to being confused, man.”

Bruce's heart would definitely be doing somersaults if it could, but the serum is keeping him at a steady, even heart rate.

“What are you saying?”

Tony shrugs a little, licking his own lips.

“I don't know. I'm saying I might have feelings for you, too, I just need a little bit longer to figure it out. Just give me a little bit longer to figure it out.”

Bruce goes to nod, that warmth blossoming through his whole body, before he remembers something.

“Tony-- I'm leaving for South America as soon as I can. I mean, uh, you can take all the time you want, but I don't want you to be confused over someone who's not even going to be around.”

Tony shoots him a bit of a disbelieving look.

“Obviously I'm going with you.”

The kind of look that Bruce gives Tony at that is enough to convey exactly what he thinks about that idea. There's no way that he's going to let his friend change the entire outlook of his life just because of some kind of sense of responsibility or tie to this serum, just because he'd been the one administering it to Bruce.

It had been all Bruce, really. He'd been willing to share the credit if there had been credit to share, but in an instance like this, there was no way that he was just going to sit by and let Tony ruin his life.

“You're not coming with me. Are you insane? There's no way that something like that can happen. What about your family and your friends and Pepper?”

They'd never really talked a lot about Tony's family-- Bruce knew that they'd died in the accident that had left him creating the arc reactor that sat heavy and glowing in the centre of his chest, but he didn't know much about who took care of him back home or anything like that. Tony never seemed interested in talking about it, and Bruce never seemed interested in forcing Tony to do things that he didn't want to do.

Tony just gives him a look that could wither the brightest of leaves, and leaves even Bruce feeling a bit cold.

“None of that is enough to stop me from coming with you-- I don't even have any family left at home, and my friends... come on, Bruce, do you really think any of that is going to be enough to stop me from doing something that I've already put my mind to? I've decided that I'm going to go and I'm definitely going to go. Anything that I was going to do back home-- invent this suit to change the world? I can do that anywhere. I don't need a fancy lab to do it, and that was all my house really had going for it.”

Bruce just shakes his head, his hands coming up to cradle it briefly. He doesn't know how to properly argue with Tony. For him, this decision is a last ditch effort. He's already a criminal on the run. The government wants him to try to find a way to get ahold of the Other Guy (or at least the General does), and if they knew that he was the Other Guy-- well, who knew what kind of experiments they might try to run him through to try to harness that kind of power.

But for Tony, this was just taking things away from him, and Bruce couldn't burden him this way. Especially not knowing that it would probably just end up being something that his friend would come to hate him for later.

“What about your robots, Tony? What about the suit you've been building for the contest? All of the work you've been doing for all this time? You can't just throw that all away for some guy that you met at summer camp because it sounds cool.”

Tony definitely looks offended at that suggestion, and Bruce bites his lip. He might have gone a little far with that, but he wants to make it clear to Tony what he's offering to do.

“You know they're going to realize that it was me that helped you get out of that prison, don't you? I just cut the power for long enough to get you out because they didn't have any guards-- they didn't think anyone was going to care enough to try to get you out. I didn't have the kind of tools to cut their surveillance tapes or anything like that. They're going to know it's me. So it's not like I have a whole lot of options here, either.”

Bruce drops the journal he'd been toying with, and stares at Tony in shock.

He hadn't even thought about the ramifications of what had happened back at the prison. He'd just thought that maybe the prison was so worn down that it had really been that easy to get out of. And also he really thought that Tony was a genius, so it hadn't even crossed his mind to think that Tony could have gotten caught. Especially not in such an obvious way.

“You knew you were going to get caught?”

“It was the only way to get your sorry ass out of there, we didn't really have a lot of options, did we? I couldn't leave you in there for any longer than you'd already been in there. You should have seen yourself!”

Bruce rubs his face with his hand and draws in a deep breath. The serum is working even better than he'd hoped that it could have, but he's still too stuck on the fact that he'd completely dragged Tony into this that he can't focus on that.

“Tony you-- I'm sorry. I never meant for you to get stuck in this mess with me.”

Tony just offers him a lopsided grin, shrugging a little. He's definitely taking the whole situation a lot better than Bruce is.

“Hey, Big Guy, take a breath or three. My life is a hundred times more interesting right now than it was when I showed up for camp this year. I guess this is the kind of adventure that girls are always dreaming up, huh?”

Frowning at him a little, Bruce just shakes his head. “No, no I don't think this is the romantic adventure-- this isn't a romantic adventure at all. We're going to run away for South America and probably live in a tree or something, Tony. I don't know what you think is going to happen, but you'll probably hate me by the end of it.”

It takes a minute, but Tony's expression does soften a little at that as he sighs. “Look, Bruce, we're not going to live in a tree. We're not going to live in the Hilton or anything, but I have a lot of money hidden away in some secret accounts from when I used to threaten to run away from home a lot when I was young...er. I'm just saying-- we don't have to live in a tree. We can probably at least live in a cave somewhere. A home away from home, if you will. And stop saying that I'm going to hate you and give us some time to figure out if something like that is even possible, okay? Right now I kind of want to drug you until you either calm down or fall asleep, because you're seriously worked up. That's not going to get us anywhere. It's starting to piss me off a little bit, to be honest.”

Bruce takes another deep breath. He's getting good at deep breathing.

“I just think that you're taking things too lightly. We need to be serious about this thing.”

“We are being serious about it, but there's nothing we can do until we get out of this hellhole.”

Bruce finally just nods and moves over to the cot, feeling a lot more tired all of a sudden. It might just be a cot, but it might as well have been a king sized bed in the middle of a Hilton bedroom compared to that cell.

“I'm not going to get a chance to say goodbye to Betty, am I?”

He says it, finally, laying down and leaving enough room for Tony who makes his way over to the cot, shaking his head.

“It's too risky. We'll have to leave first thing in the morning when the guard is at its weakest. I'm sure you'll see her eventually one day, but for now we can't see anyone before we leave. We just have to steal one of the unmarked cars that they use to go into the city, and leave without anyone noticing us.”

Bruce nods sleepily, reaching out to wrap his fingers around one of Tony's wrists, just needing to know that he's really there, that this isn't some elaborate game that his mind is playing back in the cell. A little bit longer in that cell, and he might have started hallucinating things as clearly as this. He just wanted to make sure that he hadn't actually started.

“Sounds like a lot of work. We'll have to make it work.”

“We will, Big Guy. We will.”

The morning comes quickly and a little unwelcome for Bruce. He wakes up pressed close to Tony, still holding to his hand as he slowly comes to.

It's still dark, not even the slightest bit of light hinting out from the horizon yet. Perfect, that's exactly what they'd wanted, what they'd needed for this. He shakes Tony awake carefully.

“Tony get up, we've got to get as much of our stuff packed up as we can.”

He plans to bring all of the journals with the serum information written in them-- there's no way that he's leaving them behind to be discovered. He doesn't care about anything else.

Tony is a little slower to get up, and when he does, the only thing that he grabs is a robotic hand that he'd spent the better of the summer on (or whatever time hadn't been spent freaking out over Bruce's predicament, and of course that sends another jolt of guilt through Bruce) and a small stack of blueprints that Bruce knows are for the rest of the suit that the arm will eventually match up with..

“Everything else is replaceable.”

Bruce just nods and moves to follow him as they leave the cave. He glances back at it a little, and is surprised to feel the strange pang of loss, like he's losing a piece of home. He hadn't even been here that long, but so many parts of this camp had integrated themselves into his life. He glances forward again to see Tony carefully making his way through the brush.

Some things more than others.

“I can see the cars from up here. It looks like there's only a few guards out, and they're mostly searching over by the prison grounds and by the barracks, like they think we're going to go back there.”

Bruce isn't entirely sure that some of the guards at this camp aren't a bit stupid. But he chalks it down to Ross and how furious he must have been to see that Bruce was gone, and how irrational that must have made him. He'd probably tried to put himself into the mindset of a teenaged boy and what he would do, instead of putting himself into the mindset of someone like Bruce.

Thinking of Ross makes him angry, though, and he doesn't want to be angry. It also makes him think of Betty, and he wishes that he could have apologized to her. He'll have to find a way to do it some day. Send her a letter or something when they were far away, far enough away that they were safe from Ross's grasp.

“Bruce, are you listening?”

Bruce blinks a little, but nods, pulling the cap he'd put on over his eyes a little more. It is the closest thing that he'd been able to come up with as a disguise. After all, he is supposed to be dead, according to what Ross had told people.

“So what, you want to just go ahead and hot wire one of the cars? I've never hot wired a car before.”

A wide grin just spreads across Tony's face at that.

Of course.

“I have.”

Bruce just rolls his eyes, but the grateful feeling in his chest just about doubles. How would he have done all of this without Tony?

They make their way down to where the cars are quietly and so very, very slowly. In fact, it is so slow going that by the time they get down to the parking lot, the sun has started peeking out from behind the mountains just a little bit, and Bruce is beginning to feel just a little bit anxious.

“We have to hurry.”

Tony just shushes him as they approach the closest car.

“Keep watch. This'll only take a couple of minutes.”

Bruce stands pressed along the side of the small, rickety looking car and watches for any of the guards that might come their way. It is weird that they aren't seeing any of them, that not a single one of them has impeded their attempts to get out so far. He is almost suspicious of it. It is almost like they want them to get out.

But that can't be true, because Ross needs Bruce to stay, doesn't he? To keep track of the Other Guy, to find him.

Unless he thinks that Bruce will lead him to the monster.

“Tony, I think this is a trap.”

His eyes are moving over the entire fenced off area.

“There's a pass in here, we'll be able to get out of the camp completely. Good, I was pretty sure they all left these in the cars.”

More suspicion.

“Tony. Tony, I think we're being set up.”

“You're being paranoid. Hurry and get in the car, I'm about to start it.”

True to his word, the car started without much more effort on Tony's part, and Bruce moved to hop into the passenger seat.

What choice did they have? Even if it was a set-up, it was their only option. They'd just have to find a way to get out.

“Tony, we're definitely being set up.” Tony's eyes never leave the road as he drives them towards the gates the will lead them out of the camp. Bruce's heart is beating just a little heavier than usual, the serum still keeping him under control. He is glad for that because he's certain that otherwise he would already have lost control.

One swipe of the card. That's all it takes before the gates opens and they are free of the camp and Tony presses down hard on the gas and they are out of there as quickly as possible.

“You know what, Big Guy. I think we're being set up.”

Bruce lets out a long breath that he didn't know he was holding. It is so important for Tony to believe him, and he'd never realized just how important.

“I've been trying to tell you that, how did you figure it out?”

“The surveillance cameras watching us when I was stealing this car, and I was still able to swipe that card and get the gate to open. They knew we were stealing the car and they didn't lift a finger to stop us. Either Director Fury is in on it with General Ross, or Ross has really done a great job sweeping things under the rug.”

Bruce had only met Director Fury the couple of times that he'd come out to see the camp in motion, and while he'd seemed almost... frightening in his own way (maybe it was the eye patch, maybe it was the deep voice or just the all around command that his presence demanded, Bruce didn't know), he didn't seem completely insane in the way that Ross had. Bruce even recalled the way that Fury had called Ross away on one of the occasions when the other man had been harassing him. He had a bit of a hard time believing that too many other people aside from Ross could be directly involved in this. He could be wrong, because what did a teenager like him really know? But that was just what his gut was telling him.

Closing his eyes for a moment, Bruce nods. They were free for right now, though.

“They're not that smart, though. Not if they think we won't have noticed them watching us. We'll just have to stop in the first town and steal a new car. Something totally different. Switch cars at every town until we get to the first airport that will fly us the hell out of here.”

Bruce frowns a little and glances over at Tony.

“You want to steal people's cars? A lot of people's cars?”

“Do you want to die? Because they'll kill us both. I'm sure they already told our families that we were dead. Yours for sure, my caregivers are next. What a tragedy, this year so many people dying at the camp. A really hungry rampaging animal that just decided to walk onto the property. How unfortunate.”

Bruce pales a little and turns away. He'd never wanted to be the kind of guy that takes anything away from people who weren't involved in his problems. It didn't seem fair at all, but he had to do what he could to protect Tony. There wasn't much that he could do to do it, either, just this.

“Okay, we'll do your plan. You have access to your money, still? For flights and everything? They won't be able to track it?”

“My accounts are all under a pseudonym, they'll never find us that way. I'll just take the money out a little bit at a time at every town we stop at so that they can't track big withdrawals, either. We're going to be all right.”

Tony reaches over and squeezes Bruce's knee, and he feels significantly better, breathing out more evenly.

They were going to be okay.

“We're still twenty miles from the nearest town. I don't think they're going to follow us yet, but they've probably got a tracker on this car. You can close your eyes if you want to.”

Bruce shakes his head, his gaze moving back to Tony. “No, I'm all right. I slept all right last night, better than on the prison floor.”

Tony makes a sound of agreement, and they stay like that, Tony's hand on Bruce's knee for the rest of the ride into the town.

It's not like they have any time to waste once they get into town, but Bruce wishes that they could have spent more time looking for which car they were going to switch to. Their first stop is to an ATM where Tony takes out his first batch of money, and they move to take the first car that they see parked on the side of the road that looks too old to have a good security system on it. They're right, because Tony is able to break into it easily, and getting it started is just as easy.

In fact, it's not until they're on the road that Bruce hears a strange rattling in the back and turns around and sees that there is, in fact, a rattle sliding around in the back seat. A carseat, too. So they've stolen a family's car. That makes him feel even worse, and he stews in that knowledge for the eighty miles that it takes them to get to the next town.

Tony seems to get what it is that is getting him worked up, and just sighs a little at him as they get out of the car. He folds a hundred bill up and tucks it into the glove department.

“We can't feel this guilty every time, Bruce. We're not hurting the cars, we're not even leaving them that far from home.”

Nodding, he steps out of the car and glances back at it once more.

“Can we try not to take any more with baby seats, though? It can't be that hard.”

Tony just nods and they move on. It's harder in this much daylight, but they find an alley where there are a few cars parked, and after glancing as discreetly as possible in the windows to make sure there aren't any baby seats in them, Bruce keeps watch, and Tony gets them into one of the cars. Bruce knows that Tony is placating him to some extent, but he can't help but feel relieved for it. At least they won't be hurting any families with small children in the immediate future. That's the least he can do.

This time they'll have to drive the car further. They're going to drive it as far as the town that they plan to spend the night in. It'll have to be a cheap hotel, since Tony has only been able to go to the ATM a couple of times that day and they're saving their money for the flight (and also nicer hotels don't tend to want to rent rooms to strange teenaged boys with no parents), but they've been sleeping in a cave so Bruce doesn't think that they'll care.

They drive for eight hours this time and the sun has long since set when they pull the car into an empty parking lot a few blocks away from what seems like a bit of a dive of a motel. It looks good enough for them for the night, though.

It's actually surprising how easy it is for them to rent a room for a night without a credit card or anything. The guy at the desk seems pleased enough just to have their cash and gives them a key (an actual key, even) to the room, and sends them on their way.

There's just the one bed in the room, but there's a bathroom with a shower, and Bruce is almost weirdly excited to see it. He can't even remember the last time that he'd taken a shower, but he knew that it had been a long time. He almost wanted to apologize to Tony for having to drive in a cramped car with him when he must smell absolutely ripe.

“I'm going to take a quick shower,” he says quickly, shrugging off his backpack and turning towards Tony.

“Yes, please do. I'm going to find some vending machines to see if we can have the ever-healthy dinner of chips and chocolate bars.”

Bruce nods and grins a little before turning and heading to the washroom. It is weird how free he feels out of the camp. He hadn't realized exactly how tied down they'd been in there. A single glance down at the raised scar on his wrist reminds him just how tied down they'd been there, and he feels a momentary sense of panic. He has to ask Tony if these ID tags chips are traceable, too.

But if he'd thought that his feelings for Tony were just a byproduct of being locked up together in a camp like that, he is wrong. He still can't stop the warmth that floods through him when the other boy smiles at him.

He is actually getting pretty used to it at this point.

Thinking about his own feelings for Tony leaves him wondering about what Tony had said to him in the cave. That he might have feelings for Bruce. Real, true feelings. He is confused, just needs time. Bruce can't remember what it had been like to be confused about his feelings for Tony, because even though it has only been a few weeks ago, he can just remember those feelings being stronger than they have any right to be.

In a situation like this, feelings are only likely to either dissolve or become stronger.

He wonders which one of those are going to happen to the two of them.

True to his word, he doesn't take his time in the shower, just making sure that he is clean before coming out with the towel wrapped around his waist to find that Tony has definitely found some vending machines. The other boy is surrounded by a small pile of chips and chocolate bars, and he looks extremely pleased with himself.

“Dinner, then?” Bruce asks with a small laugh.

“Are you planning to eat naked?” Tony asks, his eyes moving over Bruce's body with no small amount of interest. The obviousness of it makes Bruce flush. It is good to know that Tony is still interested in him physically.

“I washed my clothes, so they're still drying. I didn't think you'd mind?”

Tony just shrugs a little and tosses a bag of chips at Bruce. “I don't mind. Not if you don't.”

“We're both guys here, right?” Not that that comment makes a lot of sense, given what they have gotten up to in the past. Given the way Tony raises a brow at the comment, he is clearly thinking the same thing.

“I guess we're alone and in a hotel room, we can do anything that we want to do.”

“Well, we are having chips and candy for dinner,” Bruce agrees.

“That's only part of what I meant.”

Bruce swallows hard and glances away. “I, uh, didn't come out here like this because of that, honestly.”

Tony nods and looks away for a moment himself.

“This is awkward, isn't it? Because of the whole feelings thing.”

Bruce is glad that Tony brought that up, because he really didn't want to be the one who did.

“Yeah, yeah, because of that mostly. We probably shouldn't hook up or anything when we're not sure where we stand. Especially when we're on the run.”

Tony nods, licking his lips as he looks over at Bruce.

“Then you can't walk around like that tomorrow, because it puts all sorts of ideas in my head and it's really confusing.”

“Sorry, I, uh, I really wasn't thinking.”

“Are you still going to be okay to share a bed tonight?”

Bruce frowns a little. “Yeah, of course. Are you, uh, are you still okay with it?”

Tony nods immediately. “I've gotten pretty used to it. It would be weird it we didn't. It was weird when you were gone for those two weeks.”

“I was in prison, I couldn't really help that.”

Tony just shrugs at him and goes back to opening his bag of chips, like he's done with the conversation. Bruce can't exactly blame him. For someone who had never seemed to enjoy talking about his feelings a lot, Tony had gotten dragged into a lot of conversations about feelings lately. It probably wasn't totally fair, and Bruce had to bite down on his bottom lip to hold back from apologizing for that, too. It probably wouldn't be all that helpful to any cause that he might have been thinking of, anyways.

“Some variety you got here,” he offers half halfheartedly instead. It's not his best job of deflecting the conversation, but what he can see of Tony's face looks a little appreciative and so he'll count it as a win.

“Well this is some kind of fleabag motel. It's not like there are a whole lot of vending machines to pick from. I didn't think it was a great idea to be out there too long, either, in case we'd been followed. I just grabbed the first bunch of food I could find and ran back here. Pretty sneaky of me. We're just lucky that they had a change machine so that I didn't have to go asking that creep at the front desk for anything. He seemed like the kind of guy who would sell his own family for twenty bucks, and I didn't want to give him any more reasons to remember our faces. Especially one as memorable as mine.”

Bruce nods, chewing down on a chip thoughtfully. Tony is definitely better at this than he'd thought. He's not sure that he would have thought of doing any of these things himself. He'd mostly planned on sleeping outside and keeping as far away from the general population as possible when he'd run away. That has been the only surefire way to stay safely away from detection as far as he is concerned.

But there is no denying that sitting on a bed in a somewhat cool room with someone like Tony, someone that he would have definitely missed, is infinitely better than sleeping on some leaves somewhere and just trying to hide in the bush as he tries to, what, walk to South America? Steal what money he can find to get a flight there? He's been so desperate to find a solution that he hasn't actually come up with a cohesive one yet. It has just been a go with the problems as they've been tossed at him.

It is almost frightening how unprepared he has been for the whole situation.

“Earth to Bruce. You still in there, Big Guy? You're not thinking of a change in bodies again, are you? Because this isn't really the place.”

Bruce just shakes his head and takes a deep breath. There's no use in panicking about something that isn't even happening to him. He's safe for now, and he's with Tony, and they're well on their way to South America. They're going to find their way there, because between the two of them, they're smart enough to outsmart the military. To outsmart Ross who has seriously underestimated them.

And because if they don't succeed, they're going to die. Or worse. He doesn't fully understand what the 'or worse' could be yet, but he knows that there is one.

“I'm not going to transform. It makes you miss the days of the watch though, doesn't it? That was a nice gift... I'm sorry that it broke.”

He did miss it. The beeping was a good way to indicate to people other than him (see: Tony) when the transformations were close. He hadn't seen it since the big argument they'd had-- since he'd woken up naked that last time in the woods with Betty. He assumed that it had broken off during that last transformation.

It seemed like a waste that he hadn't been able to go back and look for it, but there had been no way that he could have gone back in those woods with the soldiers combing them for the Other Guy. Ross would have found him in a moment.

So the only gift he'd received from someone other than his aunt for almost as long as he could remember--

His aunt.

He hadn't been able to give it a lot of time before, given that his life had been in so much danger and everything, but he had time now. Time to think about the fact that she thought that he was dead, that she was going to think that she'd sent him off to a camp to be mauled by a bear or something equally as horrible.

Bruce was never going to see the softness of her face again, was never going to hear her voice again, was never going to know what it was like to sit in the company of someone who was related to him again. To sit with her in the kitchen while she cooked and smelled like home and family and everything he'd long since thought he'd lost.

Things he had lost now.

He was never going to get to properly thank her for taking him in when she could have thought just like Ross had thought- that he was going to turn into some sort of murderer, after what had happened between his parents. He was never going to get to that age with her where they were going to be able to be friends instead of just relations.

Ross had taken that from him, and he feels a sharp spike of anger that spins and mixes with loss in his belly, and he lowers the potato chip bag back down to the bed. He is definitely not hungry anymore.

He'd decided to come to the camp in the first place as a way to give her a break and to give himself the chance to be surrounded by like minds, and this is how he'd ended up.

It was hard to blame it entirely on Ross, since he was the one who had wanted to experiment with his own body, had wanted to prove that his own knowledge was strong enough and good enough that it could make him 'all he could be' and turn him into a perfect soldier.

It was hard to regret coming to the camp in the first place, when he had Tony sitting across from him on the bed, a messy stripe of chocolate on his cheek as he ate a chocolate bar, feelings that he didn't even understand yet, swelling inside of him.

It was hard to measure what he'd lost with what he'd gained and what he was personally responsible for, but Bruce knew that it was time for him to grow up a little more and a little faster. He had created this situation for himself and for Tony, too. He couldn't just keep claiming that Ross was terrorizing him and there was nothing that they could do about it.

He had to keep looking for a cure for these transformations.

He didn't have to stay dead forever, if he could figure that much out. He could save Tony, too.

Tony who was trying to talk to him again, too, whoops.

“Seriously, is there something wrong with you? You keep checking out on me, and you're not eating your dinner.”

“I'm not hungry,” he finally says, a little quieter now as he pushes the food away from him a bit. “Sorry, I'm just thinking. About tomorrow, I think. We should steal a car that can take us a bit further, so we won't have to stop as many times.”

Tony does look a little surprised at that, the chocolate bar stopping halfway to his mouth.

“ _You_ want to steal a car that we can take further away from where it belongs? Seriously, Mr. Goody Two-Shoes?”

Bruce forces himself not to flush, refuses to do it. Nothing good can come from being embarrassed by being teased a little.

“We need to make at least a little bit better time than this. If we can get a couple towns further than this before switching cars again, maybe we can confuse them. We don't want to be too predictable, right?”

Tony nods, grinning a little. “You're right. Now you're becoming the criminal mastermind I need you to be to be my greatest sidekick!”

Bruce can't help but grin a little at that, too. He doesn't even mind the title of side kick at this point. Just being involved with Tony is enough for him, and really, the less involved he is in the bigger parts of this, the better. Tony already proved that he's better at thinking through how to steal the cars and get them to where they need to be. Bruce will just leave himself in charge of figuring out how to keep them hidden from the military.

They'd be a team.

“We're a team,” Bruce agrees, moving off the bed to head back into the bathroom so that he can at least change back into his boxers now that they are dry, before heading back into the bedroom. “We're really doing this.”

Nodding, Tony licks his lips and moves to pack the remaining snacks into a plastic bag that he ties and places on a chair near the door. “We're really doing this. Too late to go back now,” he warns.

“Not looking to go back,” Bruce promises.

They sleep pressed closely together that night, almost spooning, and Bruce is infinitely grateful for it. He feels safer with Tony pressed close against his chest than he had in a long time, and when he finally closes his eyes, it's when Tony's breath has evened out and he's sure that his friend is asleep.

Despite the closeness of the previous night, and the way that Bruce wakes up with Tony's face smooshed against his shoulder, and his own pressed against Tony's cheek- there's no awkwardness in the morning. They both just roll out of bed, taking turns in the washroom, brushing their teeth and getting dressed, before sneaking out of their room before the sun rises.

They don't take too much time choosing a car this time. Bruce does do a double check to make sure there aren't any baby toys in the back seat (because he doesn't think he can deal with the guilt of that again), but aside from that it only takes Tony a few minutes before they're on the road again.

The car does smell a little strange this time, though. Bruce doesn't like it at all, it's like a mix of fast food and dirty gym socks, and he has to roll down the window halfway just to make it bearable.

“We got a real winner today,” Tony mumbles sleepily, putting the car into gear, and pushing hard on the gas as they make it onto the highway and away from the small town.

“How can it smell so bad in here? I think we might be doing someone a favour by taking it and airing it out for them for a while.”

Tony snorts a little and nods, reaching over and resting his hand on Bruce's knee the way he had been doing the last few legs of the journey.

Not that Bruce minds. It gives him a level of closeness that he isn't sure that they are going to have anymore, and reminds him that Tony is just confused-- that he hasn't just forgotten about Bruce.

“If that makes you feel better about the smell, then yeah, we can go with that.”

Bruce smiles a little, leaning his head back against the headrest, and letting his hand fall down to rest lightly against Tony's wrist, pleased when Tony doesn't pull away from the touch. Good, that was... good.

They drive for almost the whole day in that car, dealing with the fact that the smell just isn't going away, before they stop in a bigger town about nine hours later. They only stop long enough for Tony to make a pitstop at the ATM, and then to switch cars.

Bruce isn't sure what it says about him or his moral compass or anything like that... but it is definitely getting easier. Standing outside of a car and watching for any kind of police presence or anyone that could be a threat to them... he is getting better at it.

“Tony, stop!” he hisses, moving to grab at the back of his friend's shirt and yanking him against the building as a group of clearly inebriated adults come around the corner and into their direction. Bruce covers Tony's body with his own, and does everything that he can to make it look like they are just two kids who are messing around.

“Hey! You two kids ought t'get a room!”

Bruce feels himself flush, but shifts his body just a little so that he can turn towards the group, making sure that Tony is still as covered as possible.

“Oh, sorry! We, uh, didn't realize anyone would be out in this area!”

The group just laughs and waves him off as they keeps walking down the street. Everything goes quiet after that except for his breathing and Tony's breathing, and he is still breathing hard against his friend, pressed tight against him.

Now is definitely not the time to be thinking about how good it feels, but he can't stop that thought from crossing his mind for the slightest of seconds before he pulls away slowly and very reluctantly.

“Sorry, it was the, uh, only thing I could think of.”

“That was a great idea,” Tony argues, shaking his head as he runs his fingers through his hair and moves back to the car. “You don't need to apologize. No harm done.”

Bruce nods and moves back so that he can get back into position to watch for anyone else who might come.

Lucky for them, the streets remain quiet for the rest of the time it takes for Tony to get into the car and get it started, and Bruce hops into the passenger seat and they continue on.

“A few more hours and we'll stop for the night?” Tony offers.

“That's, uh, that's good,” he agrees as Tony's hand slides over his thigh to come to rest on his knee.

Bruce is starting to feel like he might be the one who is confused in this situation.

When they do stop for the night at a motel that looks just as dingy as the one from the night before, Tony just pulls out the bag of uneaten snacks from the night before and spreads them over the bed.

“We'll have to eat something that isn't just this eventually, you know,” Bruce says slowly, even as he reaches for a small bag of chips.

“I was hoping that they might have a little restaurant in the motel, but no luck. Maybe tomorrow night. We'll just have to make due. You didn't even eat anything last night, so you don't get to complain about anything.”

He has to concede that point, and so Bruce just nods, and almost inhales the bag of chips that he'd opened. He'd been really hungry, hungrier than he'd thought, and he's not even embarrassed with himself for how quickly he makes his way through a second bag of chips.

“Feel better, then?”

Bruce glances up, brows drawn together in confusion. “Better?”

“You've seemed a little off since that last town where we almost got caught.”

Where he pinned Tony against a wall, and it had felt almost like the last time that they'd touched each other. He hadn't been _off_ , exactly, he'd just been confused.

“I wasn't off, I was just...” He doesn't know what to say without sounding a little bit crazy.

“Scared?”

Actually he is afraid. Not of being caught, though that is on his mind most of the time. He's afraid of the fact that he doesn't understand the way he feels about Tony or how it's possible to feel so much for one person over such a short period of time-- he wonders if this is what Tony is confused about, too. Or if Tony is just confused because he has feelings for a guy. Or if Tony is just confused that he has feelings. Bruce isn't sure what Tony is confused about, and that makes him confused, too.

“It's hard to explain,” he finally says, sighing. “It's all-- it's all, uh, confused.”

Something knowing shines in Tony's eyes, then, like he might actually understand, and he nods, eating his chocolate bar slowly.

“Oh, I get it. I understand confused.”

After that, things are quiet between them for the rest of the night. Not awkward or anything like that, in fact it's an almost comfortable awkwardness, but it's quiet anyways. They don't stay up much later, though, since they'll have to be up before the sun to get themselves a new car.

Bruce waits until Tony is comfortably under the blankets before he turns off the light and navigates his way back to the bed carefully, sliding under the blankets and pressing closer to the other boy.

Neither of them falls asleep quickly. Their breathing is even, but not deep, and Bruce finds himself just staring at the dark space that he knows is where Tony's face would be. He wishes that things were a little less confusing, because all he wants to do is hold Tony and tell him that everything will be all right-- and they're running away together, and how ridiculous is that?

“I'm more confused than I was before, just so you know,” comes the voice that startles Bruce from his own thoughts, and he tilts his head down a little when he feels a hand on his face. Tony's hand. It's calloused from all of the work that he's done with his robots, and Bruce is pretty sure it's still dirty from where he'd been breaking into cars all day.

He doesn't care.

“This doesn't mean I'm not confused anymore.”

And then there are lips on his own, and they're chapped and warm and pressed hard and insistent against his. It's different than the last kiss that they'd shared, because there's a slight hesitance to the kiss. Tony's tongue still comes out to slide lightly against Bruce's lips, but it's Bruce's tongue that slides into Tony's mouth, brushing lightly against Tony's, mapping exactly what touches of his tongue it is that makes soft sounds escape Tony's mouth.

There are teeth involved this time, too. Tony's teeth dragging lightly against Bruce's bottom lip before he sucks it slowly into his mouth and they're breathing a little harder into each other's mouths before too long, just breathing, their hands still by their sides as Bruce presses soft closed mouth kisses to the corners of Tony's lips.

“I'm confused, too.”

He can feel when Tony's lips curve up into a bit of a smile and he nods.

“Good. Now go to sleep, you make me tired.”

As comfortable as he'd been when he'd fallen asleep, Bruce should have known that something like that would only be short-lived. He couldn't have hoped that it would seep over into his waking hours again.

He would never have guessed, though, that he would have been waking up trembling and bathed in sweat with Tony shaking him hard to wake him up.

“C'mon, Big Guy, you're freaking me out a little here. What's going on?”

Bruce's eyes won't focus properly, and his heart is pounding loudly in his ears. Loud and fast, and that is enough to have him in a bit of a panic all on its own.

The serum is wearing off. His body is going through withdrawal.

He barely has time to roll away from Tony and grab for a trash bin, before he is completely emptying his stomach into it.

It is happening faster than he'd thought. He's been hoping that this wouldn't start until they were in some remote part of South America where nobody would be hurt if he did slip up and transform before he could master it.

Tony's hands are on his back, pressing lightly there in a way that is weirdly comforting, despite how disgusting he must be in that moment. It makes the Other Guy roar in irritation, and Bruce has to fight against the instinct to brush him off.

He isn't doing this anymore. He isn't going to let the Other Guy decide every part of his life, just because he is easily the worst experiment gone wrong that Bruce has ever heard of.

“It's wearing off,” he finally manages, his voice a little hoarse from disuse. “I need to make more, but I don't have the things that I need-- the medications we stole from all of those counsellors, I don't have those here. I used the last of them in that last batch I made.”

Looking thoughtful, his hand still pressed to Bruce's lower back, Tony just nods.

“Those shouldn't be hard to get. Regular anti-anxiety medications and a couple of anti-psychotics? Every pharmacy should carry those. There wasn't anything special about them, or the military might have actually given a second look to some of those counsellors. I'm surprised we haven't found any floating around in the cars we've been stealing.”

Bruce shakes his head a little. “I don't want to steal from those people any more than we already have been.”

Tony sighs a little. “Even if it stops you from turning into Godzilla and rampaging through the streets? Really?”

Flushing at that, he turns to face Tony fully. “Don't you feel guilty at all for the things that we're doing right now? We're stealing people's cars, stealing their livelihoods, probably, and we don't even care about it? How can we just not care about it, Tony? I can't not care.”

Tony's eyes narrow a little and he pulls away a bit. “You think I don't care, Bruce? These people are going to get their cars back. We're careful with them, we always leave them where they're going to be found really easily even though it would be safer for us if we just destroyed them or sunk them into a river or something. If I didn't care, I would just keep you safe and me safe and ignore all of those other people, but instead I have to look at your Muppet looking sad face every time that we have to steal a care just to _stay alive_. This is the only way that we can do this, Bruce. I need you to be in this with me, and it has to be all the way in it, not just halfway.”

Bruce draws in a deep breath, and when he lets it out, it's shaking.

“We're going to rob a pharmacy, so you need to know right now if that's something that you're going to be able to do. We have to get those meds for you, because it's pretty obvious that you can't live without that serum.”

His breath hitches again, but he manages to catch it and breathe out evenly again. He's getting better at controlling what he can of this thing on his own. Maybe eventually he won't need a serum every day, but for now-- Tony's right. He's a danger to every single person that he comes in contact with if he doesn't have that serum, and that's much worse than stealing medication from a pharmacy.

“I'm all the way in.”

Tony smiles a little and leans in to press their foreheads together lightly. His is still sweaty, so they stick lightly before the other boy can pull away, but it's not so bad.

“Go take a shower, because man... you stink, Big Guy. I'll take care of cleaning up this time. Then we'll get a plan worked out. We'll have to stay in this town for the day so we can stake out the pharmacy, but it was pretty small and it barely looked like it even had a security system. After breaking into that prison, it should be a piece of cake.”

Bruce shuffles off the bed, making a little bit of noise about cleaning up his own mess-- he doesn't know if cleaning up his vomit will make Tony any less attracted to him, but all of this activity really has worn him out, and all he wants to do is get in that shower and wash the sweat that feels as heavy on him as the skin of the Other Guy, and practice some more of the deep breathing techniques that had been at least kind of working for him lately.

It felt like the more times he became close to a transformation and manage to push himself back from the brink of it, the closer he came to being able to actually _talk_ to the beast that was at the very edge of his consciousness. Not that it was possible to actually have a conversation with it, since it was every bit the beast that he'd labeled it as, but it made noises that managed to convey emotion fairly well.

Mostly it was rage, but there had been sparks of colour of other things, too. Few and far between, and always, _always_ there, even when Bruce was in complete control of their-- his. HIS. Body. He needed to force away any of those thoughts that crept in and tried to sneak in bits of things that made him think that this body or his mind were anything other than his own.

Just because he'd made that mistake (and yes, it had been elephantine), didn't mean that he had to give up and admit that he wasn't living in his own mind. He wasn't a crazy person.

“You living in there now, Big Guy? Trying to take on a second life as a fish? Woodland Sasquatch wasn't enough for you?”

Bruce feels himself flush darkly, and steps out of the shower almost immediately, grabbing for a towel and drying himself off before getting dressed again. He still felt a little gross, the clothes were a bit sweaty, but it was a definite improvement from what he'd felt like before.

The room smells a little better, too. Tony has gotten rid of the bucket (he doesn't want to know where), and he's opened the window. It has done real miracles for their room.

“Wow, it's, uh, it's really better in here. Thanks.”

Tony just looks a little pleased with himself and nods. “It didn't take that long, I just had to make sure that you weren't trying to drown yourself in the shower.”

Bruce rolls his eyes, but for the first time since he'd woken up, feels a small smile at the corner of his lips. “Thanks, Tony. Glad to know that you'll always save me from drowning by screaming at the door.”

Tony just shrugs at him, still grinning a little.

Bruce feels stupidly comfortable, and he realizes so completely in that moment with the howling and scratching in the back of his mind of the Other Guy, and the way that the clothes that aren't his are sticking to his newly cleaned skin, and the fact that they're standing in the middle of a fleabag motel on the run from the military who wants to kill them for information on a weapon that the military doesn't even understand in the slightest beyond the fact that it's huge and amazingly strong-- Bruce realizes how desperately he wants Tony to stay with him. How much (and probably unfairly so) he needs the other boy.

He's not confused about his feelings at all, because they're absurdly simple and he'd just been avoiding thinking about them too hard all this time, because it was too hard to think about when you're with someone that you don't know feels the same, or who you know actively doesn't.

But Bruce doesn't know anything about the way that Tony feels except that there's obviously something there, and it leaves a spark of hope in the pit of his belly.

Because Bruce is uselessly, hopelessly in love with Tony.

He really hates being a teenager, too, because he's not sure if these are feelings that are honest and truly his, or if they're just because he's never met anyone like Tony who's paid attention to him the way that his friend does. He's going to lean towards the former, because he thinks that their circumstances change things a little bit, but he's still, in that moment, frozen with the fear of realizing his own feelings.

Not that he's going to be the kind of guy to start planning their wedding or anything, but his chest definitely feels a little tighter, and he has to close his eyes, because for a minute he's worried that he'll be afflicted with word vomit, and the admission might just tumble right out of him, and that's not what he wants. He doesn't want to scare the other boy off before he's even figured out if he has any kind of feelings for Bruce.

“You sure do zone out at a lot,” Tony says with a bit of a frustrated huff, shoving at Bruce lightly. “Come on, pay attention. You need to actually be present for this, and not just as a log.”

Bruce finally opens his eyes and looks over at Tony, nodding. It's not like he's seeing Tony in a new light or anything, but it's definitely different, seeing him now that he's realized that he's in love with him.

In makes him feel like he's gone from being a genius to being about eighty percent dumber, that's for sure. He doesn't totally understand the appeal.

“The pharmacy is only a couple of blocks away from here. We'll have to pick a car before we actually go through with the robbery, that way we'll have a getaway vehicle. That'll be your job, all right? Pick the fastest, cheapest car you can find.”

Bruce just nods, trying not to stare too hard at Tony. He's not going to let this whole thing get him into trouble with their planning. This is too important.

“I'll pick one. Are you doing the pharmacy on your own? What am I supposed to do?”

Tony nods a little. “It's faster if I just crack the security system and then get in and out as quickly as possible. It's such a small place, there isn't really room for two people, and I remember all the meds. I stole them for you in the first place.”

Bruce chews on his bottom lip a little before nodding. “All right, but you have to let me do something. I feel useless here.”

Tony shakes his head, sighing. “There isn't really anything this time for you to do. You know I'm going to be leaning on you a lot when we get to South America-- you're kind of outdoorsy guy... so let me be break and entering guy for you here.”

That does placate Bruce just a little, though he sighs at the fact that he's just playing lookout again. He's not even that good at playing lookout.

“I want to do this for you. Seriously, Bruce, I'm going to be pretty useless in South America, I just don't want you to forget the days when I was as useful as all of this.”

“I'm sure it-- It's fine, Tony. We're just going to wait until the pharmacy closes?”

Tony shakes his head. “We'll wait until midnight. That way we know that the streets will be pretty empty, too. Not too much business going on Sunday at midnight in a small town like this. Then we'll leave right away. So we might as well sleep as much of the day away as we can. I'll go pay the guy for another day.”

Bruce nods, even as he slowly climbs back into the bed. They should have put a lot of time between them and the military camp. Ross is probably furious. Betty-- Betty is probably doing much better by now. She probably wonders why Bruce hasn't visited her... or she probably thinks that Bruce is dead. That's right, he'd forgotten that he was supposed to be dead.

He wonders a little about Pepper, too. If she thinks that Tony is dead, and what Tony thinks about that. How he feels. But Tony really doesn't like to talk about his feelings, so that seems like kind of a bust for a topic of conversation, even though Bruce has a strange yearning to know every single thing on Tony's mind.

He's not going to turn into _that guy_ , though, so he keeps that want to himself, even as Tony comes back to the bedroom, and climbs into the bed with him, curling up close to him.

“Did you remember to brush your teeth?”

It's a weird question.

“Yeah, I puked into a bucket, after all,” he replies a little embarrassed. He doesn't want Tony to sleep away from him just because of that.

“Good,” comes the reply instead as the other boy reaches up and tangles his fingers into the curliest hairs at the nape of his neck and tugs lightly until he can fit their lips together for a kiss just the wrong side of chaste.

Bruce is breathing just a little heavier by the end of it, and his eyes are wide as he stares down at his friend.

“Try to be a log a little less of the time, it's not as fun to talk to you when you don't talk back.”

He doesn't know how Tony manages to just... go to sleep after that, but Bruce has to spend a good fifteen minutes of deep breathing to get himself to calm down from it. He really can't wait to have the things he needs to make a new serum, because if he has to live like this... things might become unbearable very quickly.

Sleep does come eventually, and when he eventually wakes up again the sky is dark and Tony is watching some kind of horrific looking reality show that he only vaguely recognizes from home, on a small television.

“How long did I sleep?”

“As long as you needed to. We haven't been sleeping that much lately, so it's not a huge surprise that you could sleep the whole day away.”

Bruce shakes his head a little to clear away whatever sleep is left in there, and sits up. “How much time before we have to get started?”

Tony glances at his watch and shrugs. “About an hour. If you want a shower you better do it now. No time to jerk off, though, so keep that in mind.”

That had only happened one time on their trip, and it wasn't his fault that he felt a little worked up from all of the just the other side of casual touches that Tony had been giving him. It's not like he'd been caught, but maybe his shower had been too long to be really as stealthy as he'd thought.

“I'm not going to do that, I just thought it might be good to get in a shower in case we have to camp out or something the next time instead of having a motel.”

Tony just shrugs again, and Bruce goes to enjoy what he figures can possibly be his last shower in a while. He'd looked at the map at the front desk yesterday-- the towns are more spread out now. There is a good possibility that they might have to camp out from now on until... well, who knows when. There is nothing wrong with trying to get in one last good shower.

“I'll be out in a few minutes.”

He does keep it brief because he is a little worried that Tony is going to think that he is jerking off (something that he actually is tempted to do, the more that he thinks about the night before), and when he comes out, the other boy has packed up their very few belongings into the backpacks, and has them ready by the door.

“Are you ready for this? There's no turning back.”

“We're already dead in the eyes of the law, aren't we? We might as well keep going on,” Bruce replies, keeping his expression as firm as possible.

Honestly, though, he is worried about what might happen if Tony is caught in this situation. If they are separated, or even if something just happens to the other boy. He's fairly sure that he wouldn't know how to deal with it. They were in this together now, and they had definitely become a packaged deal at some point.

“Let's get you some drugs.”

Bruce couldn't help the small snort of laughter at that, shaking his head. “When you say it like that, you make us sounds like drug dealers or something.”

“We could be. You know, it's almost like we're going to steal ingredients to make meth or something-- we could be rich.”

Bruce groans a little and shakes his head. “Don't even say something like that. I don't want you getting any crazy ideas.”

Tony just laughs quietly, but he seems to become more and more business like the closer they get to the pharmacy. Bruce can't help but wonder if he's ever done anything like this before, but decides that he doesn't really want to know something like that.

“You find a car close to here. I'll find you as soon as I'm finished. Shouldn't take more than ten minutes, so make sure you're ready. You remember what I taught you about breaking the locks to get into the cars?”

Bruce nods, wiping his sweaty hands on his jeans a little nervously. “Of course, I'm a great student.”

“Okay, good, I'll find you. Don't panic if it takes a couple of extra minutes, I'm going to be careful with this, I don't want to call any extra attention to us if I can help it.”

Bruce nods. He's glad that he's rubbed off on Tony at least that much so far.

“Wait Tony,” he waits until the other boy turns back to face him, and bits on his bottom lip before deciding to hell with it and stepping forward to kiss him hard on the mouth once.

“Don't take too long.”

After Bruce finds a small, slightly aged sports car, he does exactly what Tony had shown him how to do until the door unlocks easily and without the sound of an alarm to accompany it. He sits in the drivers seat and listens carefully, as carefully as he can, for any sound that would tell him that Tony had been caught in the pharmacy.

The minutes seemed to pass by incredibly slowly. After ten minutes and Tony isn't back, Bruce begins to feel a bit of panic in the pit of his stomach as he taps his fingers against the steering wheel. All he can think is what he will do if Tony gets caught trying to get medications for him. Will he be able to break him out of jail the way that Tony had broken him out of jail?

He's knocked out of his thoughts by an insistent tapping on the window, and Bruce glances up in surprise to see Tony standing there with a paper bag from the pharmacy in his arms.

“Hurry up, let's go. I thought I told you to be less like a log, not more like one?”

Bruce just lets out a sound that he can't even classify as he grins gratefully over at Tony, and shifts over into the passenger seat so that his friend can get into the driver's seat.

“Did you get everything?”

“Yeah, it was pretty easy. They had one of those dinosaur systems, so it wasn't as hard as I thought. They must not have a lot of theft in this town.”

Bruce hums softly, taking the bag from Tony as he presses down on the gas and they begin driving, quickly, the seat belt digging into his chest a little.

“This will be perfect. I can probably work something out the first chance that we get to stop.”

Tony grins over at him and nods, his hand coming over to rest on Bruce's knee just like it has been ever since they'd started.

“Good, that was the whole plan, wasn't it?”

Bruce just nods, feeling relieved as he clutches the bag tightly. Things are going to be all right, even if he still has to put up with the Other Guy in this respect.

“I thought maybe we should buy a tent in the morning, as soon as we find somewhere that's open. That way we can travel just whenever we want and not have to worry about any kind of trail.”

Bruce raises a brow, but nods. “That sounds good to me. I don't mind tents, as long as you don't mind sharing.”

Tony glances away from the road long enough to give Bruce a look that he probably thinks is self explanatory.

“We've been sharing a bed for a week, but sharing a tent with you would just be too much for my sensibilities,” Tony remarks sarcastically.

Bruce makes a bit of a face, and glances away. “I was just, uh, being polite, you know. I'm sure you've heard of it.”

Tony just laughs and squeezes his knee.

They ride in silence for a few more hours until it is late enough in the morning that they are able to stop in at a small town and pick up a tent and a couple of sleeping bags from one of the stores. It is not a very big tent, but they don't have a lot of things, so Bruce thinks it is probably going to be big enough for them to practically live in if they needed it to be. If they can get it to fit in a suitcase, they can probably take it with them to South America-- they are going to have to pick a country, soon, too, but that isn't too important yet. It will be a great tool to have with them.

“Are you tired?” He asks Tony, who definitely looks tired, after all of the driving that he's been doing. He wishes that they could switch off the driving, but Bruce isn't too sure about the side effects of the serums, and doesn't want to put Tony or anyone else in any kind of danger if he can help it.

Tony nods after long moment, and Bruce glances around. “I think I saw a sign for a campground around here. It helps that we literally in the middle of nowhere. Let's just find the most secluded place that we can and set up camp. You know Ross and the others-- they're not going to be able to find us so easily. They're never going to believe that two guys like us are able to live like this. They'll think that we need to live in fancy hotels or B&B's or something. This is going to work out for us.”

He needs to say it out loud because he needs to hear it for himself as much as he wants to say it for Tony.

“Okay, let's find a place.”

Finding a place to camp turns out to be a bit of a fiasco. It takes an hour of following small, faded road signs before they even find a camp ground, and then longer before Bruce and Tony can agree on a small place off the original camp ground area that looks like nobody had visited in years, given how much brush had grown around it.

Thankfully, it didn't look like it had been visited too much by too many wild animals, either, which had been something that Bruce had really wanted to make sure they made their priority, even as they'd been looking for a place

Of course Tony had just argued that with how twitchy Bruce had been in the car the whole time they'd been driving, they weren't going to need to be found by a wild animal, because he was going to become one. It was what had sped up the process of choosing the campground a little-- they probably should have gone a little further away from the town just to be on the safer side of things, but Bruce really was getting too close to a transformation. He didn't want to alarm Tony or anything, but he could feel it humming under his skin, and if he didn't get to working on the serum soon, he was worried that he was going to have to find somewhere to run away to, in order to keep the other boy safe.

“Hey Big Guy, want to be helpful and get this tent set up with me so we can actually start working on things instead of just staring at the grass. I'm sure it's fascinating and growing right before your eyes, but we have more pressing matters.”

Bruce makes a sound of agreement, a little embarrassed by how much he seems to be zoning out lately-- he assumes that it was an effect of the Other Guy trying to have some kind of control over his body. Not that he wants to admit that to Tony, but he might keep track of it in the journals that he's brought with him from the camp. Keep them as thorough as possible.

“Yeah, uh, sorry. Let's do it,” he says, pushing away from the car as they move over to their small clearing.

He'd thought that it might take them a while to figure out the tent-- it has been a while since he's had to use one, and Tony doesn't seem like the guy who uses tents a whole lot, but they are actually able to get it up without too much of a fuss. It isn't as big as it had looked on the box, but he doubts that it is going to be a problem for them. It would probably actually work better for them, considering that they are trying to make themselves seem as small as possible.

Getting the rest of it set up is easy and quiet, too. There aren't many people at the camp ground, considering that it is still summer. He guesses that it is because they are towards the end of the summer and because it is kind of a shitty campground.

The sun is high and hot in the sky by the time they are finished, and Bruce climbs into the tent immediately, pulling the bag from the pharmacy with him. It really won't do them many good if anyone sees him working on the serum-- it probably will look like he is cooking up meth or something, and that is some attention that they really don't need.

He carefully sorts through the pills, grateful for the millionth time for Tony and for Tony's memory, because everything is there, and reaches into his own backpack for the tiniest bit of the serum that he has left over.

Not wanting to rush the process is the most important part of it. He is careful as he crushes the pills and mixes the liquids together and then when he mixes everything together into one, he watches as it slowly changes colour into what he's been waiting for.

Relief is cool and quick to rush through him, and he moves carefully like he is going to go out and tell Tony that he's been successful.

Only when he glances up, the other boy is already standing there at the domed entrance to the tent, looking perfectly content with just watching Bruce.

“How long have you, uh, been standing there?”

“The whole time. What can I say, watching you make science does things for me.”

Bruce just flushes and shakes his head a little. Tony was being ridiculous, so it didn't make any sense for that fluttering pleased feeling to settle in his stomach.

“Next time we'll need to pick up some more syringes. I'm fine for now, but I'll be running low pretty soon.”

Tony raises a brow at him. “Next time? Look at you, budding criminal over there.”

“You said it's a fact of life, didn't you? We didn't hurt anyone this time. Not with the pharmacy thing, anyways.”

His friend is just nodding like he thinks that much is obvious.

“How long do you have to wait for that shit to be ready?”

“Half hour, just to be safe. It might be different from the last batch just by a little bit,” he says with a slight shrug. “Maybe twenty minutes if I want to push it, though.”

Tony huffs a little at that, glancing up at the sun which seems to have already decided to be on its way down. Bruce wonders how long he'd been working on his serum. How long Tony had been watching him?

“You hungry?” Tony finally asks, and Bruce nods even as his stomach growls a little, deciding to answer on its own for him.

“Anything but potato chips, please.”

Tony just snorts and reaches into his backpack, pulling out a handful of protein bars. “This is the best we have.”

Bruce shrugs a little and takes one. It's infinitely better than what they'd been eating before. Even if they are a little on the bland side.

“So what do we do after this?” Tony asks while they're sitting there, eating their dinner.

“I think we should stop at the next town and take out a bigger sum of money tomorrow. We're really close to a city with an airport that'll take us to where we want to go-- we should decide where we want to go, first. Is there anywhere in South America that you really wanted to go, ever?”

Tony grins a little, and shrugs. “I always thought Brazilian girls were hot, you know? So maybe we should go to Brazil?”

Bruce doesn't want to go to Brazil, all of a sudden.

“I was thinking of something more like Peru.”

He hasn't been thinking of anything of the sort, but it is the first thing that pops into his head.

“Are you jealous?”

The words aren't cruel, just honestly curious, and Bruce glances over at his friend. He lets out a soft sigh and glances down at the serum he's still holding in his hand. It had to have been twenty minutes by now. He just wants to take it so that he doesn't have to think of it anymore, and so that he can have a normal conversation like a normal person.

Even if he will never be a normal person ever again.

He wipes at a spot on his arm with an alcohol swab and ignores the fact that the smell of it is almost comforting at this point, and presses the needle in, the coolness of the serum making its way through his body slowly. He knows it'll take a few minutes to work, but he didn't wait all the way until the absolute last minute this time like he had been before.

He should be okay.

“You know I am.”

Admitting it is easier than he'd thought, actually.

“Because you have feelings for me?”

Tony still sounds like he doesn't exactly believe what he's saying, and Bruce doesn't know how he can't. There had to have been dozens of girls in his life who confessed feelings for him. Had he really thought that each and every one of those were disingenuous?

“Yes, because I, uh, because of my feelings for you. You know all of this already, don't you?”

Tony just sighs a little, and lays back. There's not a lot of room to get comfortable in the tent, and so Bruce puts all of the supplies he'd been using away to clear up as much of the space as possible.

“I've never believed any of the girls who confessed their love for me, you know,” Tony finally says, not looking at Bruce. “I know that a lot of the time it's my money that they fall for. Gifts or media attention, or the attention that they would get at school for having been with Tony Stark. It's a pretty big deal where I come from.”

Bruce makes a small sound of agreement, because he can understand that. It might be hard to trust people if they're constantly using you for attention like that. Even he'd had one of Tony's published journals by his bedside table, and he hadn't known him before the summer.

“The guys-- there were only a couple of them, and it was never serious. Just buddies. There were never feelings involved. I'd never really thought about there even being a possibility of feelings being involved before now.”

This time Bruce doesn't say anything, because he doesn't have any past experience to draw off of. Aside from Betty, Tony is the only person who has ever really been interested in him, and definitely the only person that he's ever been interested in in any way like this.

“You confuse me because I actually care what you think about things. I actually care that you're smart and that you turn into a Sasquatch when you get all worked up, and I care that it bothered you when I was hooking up with other people when we were hooking up, because I didn't want to see that look on your face.”

Bruce doesn't know what to say to that. He can't really tell what Tony is trying to say to him.

“I cared that Betty was holding your hand and kissing your cheek, and I cared when I thought that you might be hooking up with her, even though we weren't together or anything like that-- even though I was still supposed to be with Pepper. You made me care about things that I'd never cared about before, and it confused the shit out of me.”

Bruce turns his head to face Tony who is looking at him now.

“And I still care, even out here in the real world. I care that it bothers you that people are going to miss their cars, and that you have to check every car to make sure it doesn't belong to anyone with a baby, even though it takes extra time. You are the worst criminal ever.”

He swallows hard and bites down on his bottom lip. The Other Guy makes a small sound at the back of his mind, but the serum is already starting to take effect, and he can feel it calming down his heart rate and warming his limbs.

“I definitely have feelings for you, and I'm fleeing the country with you, so you've probably already figured that part out, but you've been waiting for a while, so I thought you should know.”

Bruce doesn't even know what to do with that information. He has no idea how to process it, because it's like his whole body goes warm and a little bit numb with it. Or the serum. Or both. He can't tell.

Instead of answering, he surges forward and presses his lips against Tony's, kissing him hard on the mouth. Their lips are chapped and the kiss is a bit dry, since all they'd been eating is those protein bars, but it's still great. Bruce loves the way their lips drag against each other as they kiss, and he's lifting a hand to tangle in Tony's hair. He feels like it's his right to touch the other boy now, like he's allowed to do it.

Tony responds to the kiss as well as Bruce could have imagined, all tongue and teeth and grabbing for Bruce's hair, tugging at the curls at the back of his hair as they kiss, and they're scrabbling for each other's clothes immediately, tugging off shirts quickly and just dropping them into whatever corners of the tent they can reach.

Really, Bruce supposes that he should just be glad that it's dark enough out that nobody would be able to see him through the tent, even if the managed to get to their little hiding spot. It's just dark enough to hide them, but not so dark that his eyes can't easily seek out every plain of Tony's body.

“Get your damn pants off,” Tony is panting against his lips, and Bruce just laughs a little, but is pretty much helpless to deny him when Tony is this close to him and in this kind of situation. Or in any situation, really.

He barely kicks his pants and underwear away from him when he glances over and sees that somehow, even in his half-crouched form, Tony has definitely managed to do it with more finesse than he had, and he breathes out in a bit of a huff. He's hard, though, and so he doesn't want to focus too much on how much better at this Tony is than him. Even in a tent.

“Come on then, Tony, I've been thinking about this in gross hotel rooms for days,” he murmurs, as he reaches out for him.

Tony is biting down on his lip though, and reaches down to close a hand around his own cock, stroking it slowly, at an almost leisure pace. Sure, Bruce had thought about that a few hundred times, too, but in this case... well, he'd really been thinking about having Tony's body pressed against his, and not just watching him do whatever he was planning to do just now to himself. He'd thought this was going to be more of a reciprocal thing.

“What are you doing?”

He probably shouldn't be complaining at all, because Tony's hand is almost hypnotizing, moving up and down his length, and he is hard too, and he always looks so damn _good_ , and Bruce has to lick his lips because his mouth has already gone completely dry just from watching him for a few minutes. Hard and the tip of his cock always flushes a deep red when he strokes it, and Bruce remembers that from the two other times that they've been in this situation-- it’s hard to forget something like that, something that has fed his fantasies for so long.

“There's something I've tried a few times on my own, and I thought you might want to try it with me. It's probably a level five in intensity, so if you don't think you're up for that, you have to tell me now.”

Bruce doesn't know what Tony thinks he wouldn't want to do with him, but he just shakes his head and hopes that whatever it is, it'll mean a whole lot more physical contact between the two of them, because this is pretty close to torture. His fingers are reaching for Tony again, itching to touch him. His own cock his bobbing in front of him, and he probably looks a little bit ridiculous, but he can't even bring himself to care.

“I want to do everything with you, Tony, I thought that was pretty obvious.”

The grin that he gets in response to that is brighter than the light still shining from the arc reactor, and it makes Bruce feel like he'd certainly said the right thing.

“Good. It's going to be kind of a tight squeeze in here, but we better get used to it, right?”

That sounds a little tricky, but Bruce just nods, shifting a little to give Tony a bit more room to do all of the moving around that he's started to do.

“What are you doing, you're going to take up the whole tent like that-- oh.”

Tony has situated himself so that he is half sitting-half laying on his back with his legs propped up and spread wide open.

Bruce has to reach down to wrap his fingers around his own cock then, squeezing it a little just to remind it not to get too excited yet. It's not too on-board with that message, but he doesn't have too much of a choice, because the whole rest of his body is on fire in a way that would usually leave him worried about the Other Guy.

“Tony, what are you planning to do exactly?”

“I like to finger myself when I'm alone-- you ever done it? It feels really great. Nice and full and tight. Never told anyone before, but it feels really, _really_ good. Always wondered what it might feel like to have more up there.”

Instead of answering, Bruce just makes a sound that he doesn't know he can really label as being any kind of noise that's normal for a person to have been making.

“I want you to watch me. I can get up to three fingers now, I figure that's all I really need anyways, Three fingers and then you'll fit right inside.”

Bruce makes another one of those sounds and swallows hard. “Are you talking about me fucking you?” He asks slowly, his voice deeper than it had any right to be.

“I thought that was pretty obvious from the way I'm laying here with my legs up in the air about to start putting my fingers in my ass, but, yeah. If you're offering.”

Bruce gives his cock one long stroke and then squeezes it hard. “Are you serious? Have you ever done this before?”

“Obviously I'm serious, why the Hell would I be joking about this? And no, I've never done this before, but I have done this with my fingers loads of times. Is that going to be a problem for you?”

Bruce shakes his head quickly. Maybe this isn't the best time for them to be doing something that he'd always thought would be so serious-- he doesn't have any protection with him, and he doesn't think that Tony does, either. They'd just had a really emotional conversation, too, but he wants this so bad that he can almost taste it, and he can feel the way his cock is throbbing with each beat of his heart now. A chance to do something with Tony that the other boy had never done before-- he wants that. He wants that more than anything.

“Do we have something to use for lubricant or-- uh, protection?”

Tony just rolls his eyes. “Of course I brought lubricant. I told you I've been fingering myself for a while.”

“And protection?”

There's a longer pause there.

“You're a virgin aren't you? I haven't actually had sex with anyone all camp... we're going to be fine. This will be a first for both of us. We're clean, it's totally safe.”

Not exactly the most comforting, but Bruce really doesn't want to think about it too much when he's so close to having sex with Tony. He trusts him, he should trust him completely after everything that they'd been through by this point-- even with something as serious as this. He'd just trusted him to throw away his life and run from the military with him. He doubts Tony would be lying about this.

He's going to have sex with Tony Stark.

“Okay. Yes. Yes, I want to do this,” he breathes, reaching forward to drag his fingers along the inside of Tony's thigh, watching the way the other boy's muscles twitch at the gentle touch.

“Good, I wasn't worried.”

His voice says otherwise, and Bruce crawls forward to brush their lips together in an almost apology. He didn't mean to leave Tony feeling unsure about anything in their new found... relationship? It's too soon for that, probably.

“Get off me or I'm going to want to come like this. I gotta reach for my lube.”

Bruce does what Tony instructs, and watches with rapt attention as the other boy reaches into the pocket of his discarded pants to grab a small tube of lubricant. He'd been carrying that with them while they were on the run from the law?

He's smearing some of it on one of his fingers now, though, and Bruce can't look away, because that finger is moving down, down, and Tony is pressing just the tip of it in with a soft moan, stroking his cock slowly once, before he works the finger in carefully.

It's amazing. He can't look away from the way that his friend's body has taken the finger inside and the way that Tony's legs are open just enough so that he can see that finger moving in and out carefully.

How had he figured out that he liked something like that?

The finger is moving easier in and out now, and Bruce doesn't even realize that his own hand is moving slowly over his own length until Tony pulls the finger out of himself and he makes a sound of loss to match Tony's own, as Tony lubes up the other two fingers, and lowered his hand back down, pressing two fingers inside.

They don't go in as easily as just the one hand, but now that Bruce has been watching, he can't bring himself to stop. He wants to be involved in this somehow, too. He had no idea that something that sounded so.. unusually strange (and he knew that men had sex this way, he just hadn't totally understood that appeal until now) could be so completely attractive. So totally appealing.

He needs to touch Tony, though, so he reaches forward and carefully slides his fingers up the length of Tony's cock, pleased with the way that it makes the other boy arch and the way his legs shake with the effort of keeping them open.

Bruce can't help but wonder what it is going to feel like inside of Tony, wonder what it is going to look like to watch himself disappear inside of his friend.

“It's hot,” he finally murmurs, fingers coming to wrap around Tony's length as the other boy finally presses that third finger inside of himself with a slight hiss. “I like seeing it.”

“It's a possession thing,” Tony mumbles, turning his head so that he can face Bruce, and opening his eyes. His face is pretty red, probably from the exertion, arousal, and some level of embarrassment. “I knew you had some kind of thing for possession.”

“You were obviously right there. How much longer? I want to know what it feels like. I'm, uh, I'm extremely ready to know what it feels like.”

“Just a minute, jeez-- the one time you decide to become impatient,” Tony mumbles. But he doesn't sound as impatient as he would have had the right to, and Bruce has to glance up at his face now, fascinated by the look of complete concentration there.

He squeezes Tony's length lightly one more time before reluctantly pulling away from it and turning his attention up so that he can press his mouth open and messy against Tony's.

It is less of a kiss and more of Tony making sounds against his lips, but he likes it anyways, especially since he can still feel the jerky movements of the other boy's hand as he works fingers inside of himself.

“Okay, okay, I'm ready for you.”

Bruce sits up immediately, grateful that there isn't anything for him to hit himself on in his haste.

“How do you want me, then?”

Tony chews on his bottom lip, his hand stils, but the three fingers still buried inside of himself.

“On your back. I think it'll be easier if I can just... ride it out.”

Bruce groans a little, but nods, and it takes a decent amount of shuffling inside of the tent to get Bruce on his back under Tony, those hands working up and down his length slowly, spreading the lubricant carefully. Never letting him get too close to the edge.

“I hope you're ready,” Comes the cocky grin, though there is the slightest hesitation behind it as Tony reaches behind himself to grab Bruce's cock (the motion makes Bruce hiss and jerk slightly), positioning himself above it, and slowly (so _slowly_ ) sinking down onto it. Bruce is sure that he's taking it just inch by inch, because the breath is gone out from him for so long, and he's pretty sure that he's never felt a grip so tight or hot in his entire life.

It's perfect.

That's the first thing that Bruce thinks as he stares at the place where Tony's body is taking his cock deeper and deeper. It's hot and tight and he can't imagine being any deeper inside of the other boy's body than he already is. But there's still a little more to go, and the thought leaves him breathless. Tony is taking him inside, Tony is setting the pace, Tony wants this. Tony who was even able to decide whether or not death was going to be able to take him.

Tony Stark.

Tony Stark is definitely now rubbing himself down flush against Bruce's pelvis, and a groan is being ripped from Bruce's throat as he pushes up into the feel of it. His gaze is finally torn up and onto Tony's face, and he can see the flush there from the exertion-- Tony's face is so red, his eyes are so wide, and his mouth is still open.

He is perfect.

“Don't move,” comes the hoarse demand, and Tony's hands are there holding down his hips hard all of a sudden. Bruce doesn't mind the heavy sort of pain that comes along with it, is too focused on the way that Tony is lifting himself just a little bit so that his cock is exposed to the warm air for just a minute, before he pushes himself back down with an almost mangled sort of sound.

It’s great. He wants more. He wants to watch more, wants to feel more. He can practically hear the beast inside of him roaring with want for it, with want for Tony.

“Can't.” Is what Bruce finally managed to say, because he can't stay like this, can't stay pinned under the other boy. It feels so good to be buried inside of him, feels better than anything he'd felt in his life, but being pinned under him makes the beast restlessly yearn to be free, even under the layers of the serum that he's built to keep it penned in.

“Sorry.”

And he reaches up to grab Tony by the hips, holding him tight and moving as quickly as he can to flip them over, only sliding out momentarily before he is hovering above the other, breathing heavily. “Sorry, it'll be better.”

Tony just stares up at him, breathing just as heavily. “Just do it, Big Guy, what are you waiting for?”

Bruce groans a little at that before he moves, holding just as tight to Tony's hips and shifting his legs wider before he glances down and watches intently as he pushes slowly back inside of the other boy. It’s intoxicating, watching as he sinks inside of Tony's body. It’s exactly what he's wanted for entirely too long.

“A-ah, yes. That's good. You're getting the hang of it.”

Bruce doesn't really need the encouragement at this point, but it is still good to hear, and he is moving his hips more quickly now, desperate to find his release inside of Tony. He can only imagine what it will feel like to feel his cock sliding messily inside him after he's come.

“You gotta move just a little--”

Bruce growls softly, lowering his head and covering Tony's mouth with his own, kissing him hard as he continues to press his hips hard up into the others, the heat coiling tight around each of his muscles as he grows closer to his own orgasm.

He’s so close.

Tony is shifting just a little under him now, Bruce takes that to mean that the other boy is getting closer, too, and he begins pressing deeper, grinding his hips up inside of Tony, trying to take every bit of hot pleasure that he can from the other boy.

He can feel it building from his fingers and toes now, hot and almost painful as his orgasm is ripped through him and he lets out a soft cry against Tony's mouth, and spills wet and messy inside of his friend.

“Tony, Tony, Tony.”

He continues moving his hips for about ten seconds before he realizes that Tony is still moving his own hips a little restlessly, and pulls back a little to stare down at him.

“Tony, what--”

Tony is still laying beneath him with his legs spread open and a deep flush spread over his body, but his cock is not even half hard, and he definitely hasn't come yet.

“You're going to have to work harder than that to get me to come, Big Guy. Come on, do something. Your jizz is going to dry in my ass before I get a chance to come and that'll piss me off.”

Bruce makes a sound and feels his face heat up. The sex has been very good for him. It is hard for him to reconcile how good it has been for him with the fact that Tony is still just laying here like this.

“Would you get some fingers in me and something on my dick, please?”

He moves a little clumsily, it’s hard to move after having come the way that he has. He carefully slides a finger back inside of Tony, feeling a heat move through him at the feel of his slippery come still hot inside of him, and shifts so that he can fist Tony's cock with his other hand stroking it slowly to hardness.

It’s almost a relief when he feels it responding in his hand, and his own gives a slight twitch against his thigh, and he almost wishes that he can get hard again so soon.

“Better?” He asks, a little worried. He’s still so new to sex, he's obviously done it wrong or something already, it is hard to remember that he's gotten Tony off before-- he can do this.

“See me getting hard? Think that speaks for itself, doesn't it?”

Bruce just nods, and moves to press his fingers deeper inside of Tony, pleased when the other man gasps sharply. “Right there,” he breathes.

It is obvious already, the way that the head of Tony's cock is getting stickier and slipperier as he continues stroking him.

He presses his fingers against that spot again a few times in a row, and Tony's hand comes down to hold his arm in place as he rides against his fingers, his hips sliding up and down as he continues making that sound.

It is pretty clear that Tony has no shame in this aspect of their relationship, and the heat rushing through Bruce has absolutely no problem with that.

“Yes-- yeah, like that, I'm gonna come.”

Bruce watches intently between the way that Tony's hips are moving and his face until he feels Tony clench tight around his fingers and watches as rope after sticky rope of come splashes over his stomach.

Carefully, he removes his fingers and pulls his hand away, moving to lay beside Tony, licking his lips. That had been pretty great.

“That was fan-fucking-tastic,” Tony murmurs, glancing over at Bruce with a grin.

Bruce just nods, not really trusting himself to speak. He still feels a little bad about the sex part, but it had been really great for him, too, and now laying beside Tony afterward and seeing him boneless like this... this is what he's wanted for so long.

“Don't feel too bad about the actual fucking part-- happened to me a bunch of times when I first started fucking girls. You'll get better at it, we'll just have to practice a lot. You seem like someone who gets good with practice.”

Bruce chokes a little on a breath, but nods and flushes, glancing away. “Yeah, I'm good with practice.”

They sit in silence like that, Bruce occasionally sneaking glances at Tony when he thinks that the other boy isn't looking, until he focuses in on the scar on the inside of Tony's wrist and something occurs to him.

“I've been thinking about these scars a lot lately. I, uh, I mean because we have the same ones, right? Because it's where we implanted those ID tags. Do you think we should be removing those? Could they be tracking us?”

Tony blinked a little sleepily at Bruce for a moment, before all of the sleepiness is gone from his expression, and he moves to sit up, cursing.

“Yes, yes, they could be tracking them if they've figured out that we still have them. We'll have to get rid of them out here. It's the last tie we have to that place, anyways, so if we can get rid of them... it'll be like they won't be able to find any trace of us without using resources that Ross might have a harder time explaining away.”

Bruce nods, and glancing around the tent for his small first aid kit.

“Then get this chip out of my skin. I don't want them having any ties to either of us. We don't need them finding us anywhere, even if it's by accident.”

Tony nods, taking the first aid kit from him, but pauses, biting down on his bottom lip a little. “It's not very sterile out here. What if we get sick?”

“I haven't had anything as much as a sniffle since I first injected myself with the serum, I don't think anything is going to happen to me, and I'll take care of you. I won't let you get sick, I swear.”

Tony reaches up and brushes his fingers against the side of Bruce's face. “All right, we're only doing this because we have to. It was a great invention at the time, I'd like to point out. It worked great for us.”

Bruce rolls his eyes a little, but nods. “Yes, it was great, now get it out of me before the army that's hunting for our heads realizes that they have a way to find us.”

The procedure itself is relatively painless, but Bruce isn't a big fan of watching anyone cut into his own skin, and he definitely doesn't want to watch Tony cut into his own skin. It's unpleasant, but the best part of it is when they're able to walk out to the small riverbank and toss the little computer chips into it, confident that they'll be carried down the stream.

All in all, their wrists wrapped in white gauze, they're able to stand at the riverbank and lean against each other slightly, feeling a bit lighter than they had before, knowing that the next day they were going to be able to make it to the biggest city in the area-- one with an International Airport.

They were almost finished.

The next morning is almost anticlimactic. One of their sleeping bags is completely ruined from the previous nights activities, and Bruce guesses that they don't really have anyone to blame but themselves for that. They have to leave it behind, because he's pretty sure that burning something like that would definitely call attention to themselves.

It's not like they'll really need two, anyways.

Packing up the serum that he'd made and the extra medications along with his journal only take a minute or two, and Tony takes down the tent to... some success. Bruce helps him after watching in amusement for a couple of minutes. He doesn't want the other boy to get too frustrated. Tony and frustration doesn't usually mean anything good. Not Other Guy levels of bad or anything, but still.

There's a small hum of anxiety in the pit of his stomach the whole time that they're putting away their campsite, and it doesn't go away, even as they pile into their stolen car. Part of it is attributed to the fact that he knows that they're now going to do the part of their plan that's the hardest-- getting out of the country with passports of supposedly dead people? He doesn't know how far Ross went with his plan to make them appear dead to the rest of the world, but he's certainly worried about it now.

Tony's got a little bit of a twitch in the corner of his mouth, too, as he pulls out of the campsite, and Bruce knows that means that he's thinking about it, too. His hand is still resting heavy and comforting on Bruce's leg, though, so there's that. Bruce is glad for that.

“We're going to be fine, Big Guy. It's a Hell of a lot easier to get out of this country than it is to get into it. We've got that working for us. We're not even smuggling anything.”

Bruce gives Tony a bit of a look, unimpressed.

“Oh, yeah, well, that doesn't really count. We should have printed out some prescription labels at the pharmacy, but it probably would have left behind too much of a footprint.”

He just nods in agreement with the other boy, his hand coming down to cover Tony's where it was resting on his knee.

“I'll find a way to hide it in my suitcase. I don't think they'll be looking that hard. We don't look that suspicious.”

Tony just throws a grin over at him, nodding. “Exactly. That's the way to look at it. There's no way that Ross has kept up with us this far. We're smarter than he is.”

That much, Bruce did believe. They'd been careful, and Ross probably still believed that Bruce was going to be keeping tabs on the pet monster he'd created. That was probably the best assumption anyone had made about the other guy so far. Bruce had gotten lucky there, if you could really call anything about all of this being lucky.

“We've got enough money to get us there and to live off of for a little while until we can figure something out. That's better than what most people have. I'm going to be able to build my robots without anyone bitching at me to do anything else, and you'll have all the room you need to rampage until you can control what's happening to you. It sounds like paradise.”

Bruce can't help the slight grin that tugs at his lips as he nods. Though he's not sure he appreciates the comment about rampaging.

“Just drive, Tony. I'd like to get there before the old dinosaur finally does figure out what we're doing.”

Snorting a little Tony squeezes his knee and presses on the gas, speeding the car up a little.

He should  be glad that it is the last car that that they are ever going to be stealing, but as they pull into the airport parking lot, Bruce feels a little tug of regret. Or maybe it isn't regret, maybe it is just that he is going to miss being on the run with Tony. Which is ridiculous, because he imagined that most of their lives are going to be spent this way.

As Tony pulls into an empty spot away from where the rest of the cars are all clustered together, Bruce draws in a deep breath through his nose and lets it out slowly through his mouth. He needs to be especially careful in this situation to keep all of his wits about him. He could turn himself into the worst kind of weapon that the USA has ever seen, and that is the opposite of what he is trying to do. That would only prove Ross right.

“Hey, Big Guy, you still with me?”

Bruce opens his eyes and glances over at Tony who is placing the keys back on the dash. “Yeah, I'm here.”

“Good. Look, we're going to have to be as inconspicuous as possible in there. We don't want them to have any reason to pull us aside or think we're even anything more than curious teenagers on a vacation, okay?”

Frowning a little, Bruce nods. He knows that. He is the one who had said that in the first place. Why is Tony just repeating his own words to him?

“That means we just have to be two science bros on a trip together.”

Bruce feels understanding dawn on him and he nods immediately. He's already figured as much. “I know that. I'm not stupid.”

What he isn't expecting, though, is for Tony to grab him by the collar of his shirt and pull them together, their lips mashed almost painfully together in a forceful kiss.

It’s still good, but it probably could have been better if he'd been expecting it.

“Tony, what--?”

“Shut up and let me kiss you before we have to go in there and start pretending.”

The second kiss is better. It's not lacking in any of the forcefulness that came with the first kiss, but at least this time Bruce is expecting it, and he's able to properly reciprocate the way Tony's lips and tongue move against his own. It's good, it's perfect, it's all he's going to be able to think about for their entire flight he's pretty sure, and there's nothing wrong with that. He'll especially be thinking about the sound that he pulls from the other boy's mouth when he bites lightly on his bottom lip, and how satisfying that is both to him and to that niggling little voice in the back of his mind that he's starting to assume in the permanent residence of the Other Guy. Or something. He hasn't really figured out how that's working yet.

“It's too bad that we don't have more time to spend here, and that we really don't know who this car belongs to and where it's been before us, or I'd say we could spend an even longer time getting it out of our system,” Tony says with an exaggerated waggle of his eyebrows.

It is effective in ruining the moment, and Bruce shoves at him a little, before reaching back for his backpack and opening the door to get out of the car.

“I'm sure you'll last until we make it to Brazil, Tony, come on. We've got to do this while we still can.” And while Bruce still has the nerve. Definitely before the window for how long the serum is working starts to narrow. He doesn't want to change on the plane, and so his goal is to keep things as stress free (or excitement free) as possible.

“Chill out a little, big guy. I didn't see any military vehicles or anything on the way here. I told you, they're going to be looking towards our families and our bank accounts for us. They won't be thinking that we'll leave everything behind to flee the country-- who in their right mind would do that, right?”

Bruce feels a guilty flush spread through him at the thought of that, and nods. Tony is right, who would do that? Not for the first time, he is reminded of exactly what he is asking his friend to give up. But he isn't really asking him to give those things up-- Tony had been the one to insist that he come along, it has been just his much his idea as it has been Bruce's. There is nothing that he could have done to stop him from coming along, short of poisoning him or finding some way to knock him unconscious.

Tony is just that kind of guy.

So there is no need feeling guilty. Not now. Not yet. Not until the next time that he does something to cause that feeling, anyways.

“Let's just go, okay? I'll feel better when we're in another country and away from all of this.”

Tony just nods and leans in to bump their shoulders together companionably before pulling a sweater over his head.

“What are you doing? It's a hundred degrees out here.”

He just rolls his eyes at Bruce. “Gotta cover up good ol' trusty arc reactor, don't I? You wanted to keep a low profile, and I'm the sexiest, most noticeable guy around if they realize that I'm Tony Stark. A sweater should do the trick, though.”

“Isn't that my sweater?”

“Admit it, you like the way it looks on me. I'm damn sexy.”

Bruce just rolled his eyes, but didn't argue the point. He did like the way his things looked on Tony. It was probably all tied into the whole possession thing.

They walked in a companionable silence to the entrance of the airport, Bruce worrying his bottom lip with his teeth the whole time. He was expecting Ross or one of his lackeys to come around the corner every time that they took a step forward, it seemed almost logical, but when they got to the automatic doors, there was nothing.

The doors just slid open with a hiss and a couple walked past them in the opposite direction, but nothing else happened.

He isn't sure how he is supposed to deal with the way his heart has been beating a little harder and faster in anticipation of something terrible happening to him and Tony.

Instead they are able to make their way to the small ticket desk (and there isn't much of a line, it seems like things are finally working in their favour), and Tony is able to buy two tickets under their actual names without any red flags going up. Ross' influence hasn't spread as far as he'd thought, obviously. It seems a little suspicious, but what is he supposed to think? They don’t have many other options beyond this one, and it isn’t really his place to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Relief is like a cool shower as Bruce finally takes the tickets and their passports back from the woman behind the desk and follows Tony to where they are going to have to wait a few hours for the next flight. It is a relatively small concession. He is pretty sure that a few hours will be manageable. 

“Can you believe that Ross didn't put us on a no fly list or anything?”

Tony just shrugs a little, but there is a grin on his face. “I told you-- after what happened at the camp, he has to lay low, too. Doesn't want anyone else to find us, doesn't want people to know what he was doing to a seventeen year old camper. Doesn't really make him look innocent, does it? They'll never be able to find us once we leave the country. We're going to be safe.”

Bruce just nods, a little blown away by everything that's happening and how quickly things seem to be moving now. “We'll be safe.”

“Yes, you'll be able to do your thing and I'll be able to do mine. We're going to be safe. I'm awesome, remember?”

Bruce glances over at Tony and grins a nervous grin before nodding. “Yeah, you're awesome. You never let anyone forget it, don't worry.”

Leaning back in his seat, Tony looks pleased with himself and nods again.

They just have to wait for their flight, eyes always open and wary for any kind of military presence. There still isn't any a few hours later, luckily. They've managed to avoid Ross this far, and Bruce just hopes that they can keep running until they've run to the other side of the world, until they've run far enough that Ross can't find them.

He can't be that desperate to find the Other Guy, to cover up what he's done by telling the world the Bruce was dead.

“Hey, are you listening to me?”

Bruce turns to look at Tony, a smile already on his face as the other boy reaches out and brushes their fingers together. They can't hold hands in the middle of an airport and be inconspicuous, but they can have this little bit of contact, and it can be enough for now.

Just for now.

“We're going to start our new lives together, you could do with looking a little less glum.”

“I'm not glum, this is my excited face,” he insists with a small grin.

“I'm pretty sure I know your excited face and that's not it.”

Bruce's face warms and he glances around them.

“That's closer.”

“You're awful, that's how you want to spend your last minutes on American soil? Embarrassing me?”

Tony shrugs a little, but the smile never leaves his face. Bruce admires that about him. He never stops looking like he knows everything that is going to happen.

“We'll be back, you know. I think we'll come back one day, and we'll be heroes. You'll be able to control your other side, and maybe I'll build a suit of armor so that we can fight side-by-side, and we'll be able to fight for other people like us against people like Ross. I'm not sure how it's going to go down, exactly, but it's going to happen.”

Bruce blinks a little, and shakes his head.

“Heroes, huh? Sounds like another one of your crazy plans.”

Tony brushes their hands together again and shrugs, giving him another one of those looks that always makes him feel warm and a little uncomfortable when they are in public.

“You've had crazier.”


End file.
